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SELECTIONS 

FROM 

THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 



BY 



CHARLES LAMB 



EDITED BY 

CAROLINE LADD CREW, B.A. 

INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH, FRIENDS' SCHOOL, WILMINGTON, DELAWARE 







LEACH, SHEWELL, & SANBORN, 

BOSTON. NEW YORK. CHICAGO. 



S ^tU^ 



VED 



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Copyright, 1897, 
By Leach, Shewell, & Sanborn. 



C. J. Petees & Son, Ttpogeaphees. 



Beewtck & Smith, Peintees. 



PREFACE. 



To Lamb was given the artist's insight to point a 
moral while he seemed to adorn a tale. In the leisurely 
unfolding of his theme there is a diffused purpose, 
slight perhaps, but one that gives a distinct sense of 
satisfaction. So unobtrusive is this element that neither 
writer nor reader could give definite form to the purpose, 
or measure the spiritual intent, for instance, of The Old 
Margate Hoy or Dream Children. Por this reason it 
has not been an easy matter to annotate the Essays of 
Charles Lamb. One hesitates to subject to a process of 
analysis a structure of such nicely adjusted proportions, 
lest one disturb the equilibrium of the whole, and in so 
doing dispel the fine effect of his " self -pleasing quaint- 
ness.'' 

Humor may be too subtle and pathos too delicate to 
intellectualize about. Accordingly, in my notes I have, 
for the most part, refrained from offering the student 
any impertinence in the form of comments upon the 
beauty, pathos, or wit of the selections. These quali- 
ties, if they yield their full pleasure, must be discovered 
and realized by the reader' for himself. And yet Lamb 

iii 



iv PREFACE. 

needs notes, because of his wilful delight in the use of 
initials and puzzling allusions, which to his contempora- 
ries, who were in the secret, were full of matter ; but 
for the readers of this generation some external help is 
needful to make felt their full significance. Only such 
aid has been given as will assist the student intellectu- 
ally, while emotionally he remains his own interpreter. 

C. L. C. 
Wilmington, Delawap,e, 
December, 1897. 



CONTENTS, 



PAGE 

Pbeface iii 

Introduction 1 

Cmtical and Biogkaphical Keferences 14 

Selections : — 

Oxford in the Vacation 15 

The Two Kaces of Men 25 

New Year's Eve 34 

Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist 44 

, A Chapter on Ears 54 

A Quakers' Meeting 62 

Imperfect Sympathies 70 

My Relations 82 

Mackery End, in Hertfordshire . 92 

The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple 100 

Dream Children ; a Eevery 116 

Blakesmoor in H shire 122 

Poor Relations 130 

The Old Margate Hoy 140 

The Convalescent 152 

The Superannuated Man ^ . . . . 159 

Old China IVO 

Notes 179 

V 



INTRODUCTION. 



What the historian calls the original sources are uncom- 
monly accessible for a life of Charles Lamb, since he has put 
his own story, more or less disguised, into his works. The 
events were few in a life whose simple happenings he has re- 
corded in his own delightful and whimsical way. One need 
hardly go beyond the alluring pages of his Essays to learn of 
his birthplace, of his father and brother and sister, of his 
schooldays at Christ's, made dear to him by the comradeship 
of Coleridge, and of those later friends whose good fellowship 
helped him to forget " the dead, everlasting dead desk of the 
India House." 

Charles Lamb was born Feb. 10, 1775, in Crown Office 
Kow, in the Temple. In his essay on The Old Benchers of ike 
Inner Temple, he thus describes his earliest home : " I was born 
and passed the first seven years of my life in the Temple. Its 
church, its halls, its gardens, its river, I had almost said — for 
in those young years, what was this king of rivers to me but 
a stream that watered our pleasant places ? — these are of my 
oldest recollections." 

His father, John Lamb, who, as a boy, had come up from 
Lincolnshire to try his fortune in the great city, was clerk and 
companion servant to Mr. Samuel Salt, barrister of the Inner 
Temple. Seven children were born to the Lambs, only three 

1 



2 IN TR OB UCTION. 

of whom survived childhood, — Charles, the youngest, his 
sister Mary, ten years older than himself, and a yet older 
brother, John. 

Charles had the first rudiments of education from a Mr. 
William Bird who kept a school in Fetter Lane. It was in 
his seventh year, in 1782, that he received a presentation to 
Christ';3 Hospital, and thus passed from " cloister to cloister." 
His school-fellows found him a gentle, reticent boy, who, on 
account of his delicate frame and difficulty of speech, rarely 
joined in the heavier athletics. It is recorded of him as sig- 
nificant of the lovableness of his nature, that he never shared 
the curt appellations of the Browns and the Smiths, but was 
always known as Charles Lamb. Originally a Franciscan con- 
vent, the school had preserved a number of ascetic traditions. 
The costume of the boys consisted then, as now, of a dark- 
blue monk-like coat with a leather girdle, yellow stockings, a 
white tie, and bare head. In those days there was stern disci- 
pline and fare of monkish frugality at Christ's. From the 
essay on Christ 's Hospital Jive and thirty years ago, probably the 
most accurate of Lamb's autobiographical writings, we learn 
that of a morning the boys had to content themselves with 
"battening upon a quarter of a penny loaf moistened with 
attenuated small beer, in wooden piggins, smacking of the 
pitched leathern jack it was poured from." For him the mo- 
notony of school-life was broken by the occasional visit of an 
aunt, who came always provided with sweetmeats ; and since 
he was within ten minutes' walk of the gardens, the terrace, 
and the fountains of the Temple, he was allowed to spend 
every half-holiday with his parents. Despite the harshness of 
its discipline, Lamb loved the Blue-coat School, founded by 
" that godly and royal child, King Edward VI., the flower of 



INTEOBUCTION. 3 

the Tudor name — the young flower that was untimely cropped 
as it began to fill our land with its early odors — the boy pa- 
tron of boys — the serious and holy child who walked with 
Cranmer and Ridley." Touched by its old-world association, 
he was proud of its historic cloisters, its monastic customs and 
ritual. Nor has the school been unmindful of its student, 
who in later years, as master of the essay, brought it renown ; 
for each year a Charles Lamb prize, consisting of a silver 
medal, is given to the best English essayist among the Blue- 
coat boys. Here a life-long and singularly tender friendship 
was begun with his fellow-student, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 
whose subtler intellect was of incalculable influence upon 
Lamb's later life, when he became the enthusiastic disciple of 
the great philosopher. 

He was only fourteen when the financial difficulties of his 
family obliged him to leave the school where his frankness 
and sunny temper had won him love among teachers and 
taught. He had then attained the rank of Deputy Grecian, 
and in another year might have entered the University. 
Christ's Hospital scholarships at the University, however, 
were limited to students about to take holy orders, for which 
Lamb was disqualified by his stammering tongue. With un- 
common taste for books, it must have been a real sorrow to 
this boy to part from the studies he loved. From his unusual 
acquaintance with things academic, and from the wistful regret 
expressed in Oxford in the Vacatioti, we can infer the sacrifice 
involved in his being " defrauded of the sweet food of aca- 
demic institution." 

On leaving school, Charles obtained an appointment in the 
South Sea House, where his brother had already been a clerk. 
Concerning this period of his life no record remains to us ex- 



4 INTR OD UCTION. 

cept his essay entitled The South Sea House. In 1792 he was 
promoted to a position in the accountant's room, in the East 
India House at a salary of £70 a year. Here, with a contin- 
ually increasing salary, he remained until within nine years of 
his death. It was he who bore for his family the real struggle 
of life, since his genial, ease-loving brother, John Lamb, stood 
aloof in selfish dilettanteism, leaving the weight of the house- 
hold to rest on any one who might be willing to take it. 

After the death of their good friend Samuel Salt, the fam- 
ily left the Temple and took lodgings in Little Queen Street. 
Here the fateful year of 1795-1796 brought to the Lamb house- 
hold a tragedy which colored all their after life. On the fa- 
ther's side there was a taint of insanity in the family. The 
baleful heritage showed itself in the gentle and unselfish 
sister, Mary Lamb, who, in a paroxysm of madness, took the 
life of her own mother. The father, whose body and mind 
were both feeble, died soon afterward ; and thus Charles, a 
young man of twenty-one, with his afflicted sister, who never 
recovered from intermittent attacks of insanity, was left prac- 
tically alone in the world. For the rest of his life, and in the 
shadow of perpetual sorrow, he never for a moment forgot the 
self-imposed task of caring for her. The story is a familiar 
one that Charles Lloyd tells of meeting the brother and sister 
in the fields near Hoxton, walking hand in hand, and weeping 
bitterly; for the ever-recurring premonitions of madness had 
appeared, and they were going toward the asylum. In calm 
self-renunciation he thus gave expression to the love he bore 
this sister, whose large, affectionate heart had show^n him all 
a mother's tenderness. It was always to his sister Mary, the 
embodiment of unselfishness, that he had looked for active 
sympathy. They had been friends from earliest childhood, 



INTRODUCTION. 6 

when they had spent happy days in occasional visits to Blakes- 
ware, Hertfordshire, where their Grandmother Field lived as 
housekeeper at the old mansion of the Plumer family. 

Like her brother, Mary Lamb was a lover of books. " She 
was tumbled early," he tells us, "by accident or design into 
a spacious closet of good old English reading, without much 
selection or prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair 
and wholesome pasturage." After books, their chief pleasure 
was the theatre. In My First Play we have an account of his 
childish delight, when he was only seven years old, in the 
tragedy of Artaxerxes. Their continued pleasure in " the 
cheerful playhouse " is expressed in Old China, where Mary 
is supposed to ask her brother, as she muses on earlier days, 
" Do you remember . . . when we squeezed our shillings a- 
piece to sit three or four times in a season in the one-shilling 
gallery — where you felt all the time that you ought not to 
have brought me — and the pleasure was the better for a little 
shame — and when the curtain drew up, what cared we for 
our place in the house, or what mattered it where we were 
sitting, when our thoughts were with Rosalind in Arden, or 
with Yiola at the Court of Illyria ? " 

Lamb's first literary venture was made in 1796, when he 
published four sonnets in a collection of verse by Coleridge. 
One of these sonnets is addressed to " Anna," Charles Lamb's 

first love, who is probably the " Alice "W n," " with the 

bright yellow Hertfordshire hair," referred to in succeeding 
essays. 

Then came a story in prose, the " miniature romance " 
called A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret. 
With the exception of the Essays of Elia, this is perhaps the 
best known of Lamb's writings. Although the incongruity 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

and improbability of the plot show its author defective in the 
qualities of a story-teller, we like it for its he art- touching 
pathos and winning grace. 

In 1800 Charles and Mary Lamb returned to the well-loved 
Temple, and made it their home for seventeen years. In a 
letter of this date, the town-bred " scorner of the fields," as 
Wordsworth calls him, thus describes his new home : " By my 
new plan I shall be as airy, up four pairs of stairs, as in the 
country, and London I would not exchange for Skiddaw, 
Helvellyn, James, Walter, and the parson into the bargain. 
Oh, her lamps of a night ! her rich goldsmiths, print-shops, 
toy-shops, mercers, hardware men, pastry-cooks, St. Paul's 
churchyard, the Strand, Exeter Change, Charing Cross, with 
the man upon a black horse ! These are thy gods, O London ! 
All the streets and pavements are pure gold, I warrant you. 
At least, I know an alchemy that turns her mud into that 
metal ... a mind that loves to be at home in crowds." Blend- 
ing the childlike with the larger mind, he confides to us in one 
of his essays his delight in the sensuous world. " T am in 
love," he says, "with this green earth; the face of town and 
country, the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet se- 
curity of streets." He drew his inspiration mainly from the 
city, and loved even the smoke of Fleet Street, asserting that 
it suited his vision. 

From the writing of witty paragraphs, epigrams, and other 
trifles for the London newspapers, he turned to more serious 
work in the dramatic field. Contrary to the advice of Cole- 
ridge and Southey, he published a drama in blank verse, called 
Pride's Cure, and now known as John Woodvil. Aside from 
its want of plot, it was two hundred years behind the times. 
" Hang the age ! " exclaimed Lamb one day, when some editor 



INTBOBUCTION. 7 

objected to his style as out of harmony with the taste of the 
day, " I'll write for antiquity ! " It was distinctly wanting in 
dramatic grasp and development of character, and became the 
subject of a crushing, though somewhat ignorant, attack from 
the Edinburgh Review. No other modern drama is so faithful 
in its reproduction of the spirit of the pre-E,estoration writers, 
but imitation of the imagery and rhythm of the old drama- 
tists was not appreciated by a generation to whom the realm 
of Elizabethan literature was practically unknowm. 

His next dramatic venture was a farce called Mr. H , 

which was quite as unsuited to the stage as John Woodvil. Even 
the excellent acting of Elliston, the best light comedian of 
the day, could not reverse its fate. On the first and only even- 
ing on which it was presented, at Drury Lane, the curtain fell 
amid a storm of hisses, in which the author heartily joined. 

His following work. Tales from Shakespeare, done in con- 
junction with his sister Mary, yielded him more success. The 
profound acquaintance of brother and sister with Shakespeare, 
and their hearty affection for him, made the writing of these 
Tales a singularly congenial task. Although the work was 
intended for the amusement of children, the literary acumen 
revealed gave pleasure to maturer minds as well. Mary Lamb 
has left a delightful account of the preparation of this volume. 
" Charles," she writes, '' has written Macbeth, Othello, King 
Lear, and has begun Hamlet. You would like to see us, as we 
often sit writing on one table (but not on one cushion sitting), 
like Herm.ia and Helena in the Midsummer ISfighfs Dream, or 
rather like an old literary Darby and Joan, I taking snuff, and 
he groaning all the while, and saying he can make nothing of 
it, which he always says till he has finished, and then he finds 
out he has made something of it." 



8 INTBODUCTION. 

A lover of out-of-the-way learning, Charles Lamb turned 
with instinctive delight to the quaint lore of Izaak Walton, 
Burton, Fuller, and Browne.- No name occurs so often in the 
Essays of Elia as that of his beloved Sir Thomas Browne, 
whose " honest obliquity of understanding " strangely appealed 
to this godfather of the waifs and strays of literature. He 
liked, too, the ppen-heartedness, the stout and free humanity, 
of the Elizabethans. In his Detached Thovghts on Books and 
Readings, he tells us, " The sweetest names, and which carry 
a perfume in the mention, are, Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drum- 
mond of Hawthornden, and Cowley." Although his was an 
era of Shakespeare revival, acquaintance with the other Eliza- 
bethan dramatists was slight. Accordingly, in his Specimens 
of English Dramatic Poets Contemporary with Shakespeare, 
Lamb disclosed to the modern world the old English drama- 
tists — his "midnight darlings." His intense appreciation of 
the poetic in life and in books gave to his criticism the value 
of creation, and won for a family of great forgotten poets hosts 
of enthusiastic students. His genius for criticism, however, 
had its limitations. Wherever the personality of the man 
pleased him, or he was sensible of the aroma of the past, there 
his judgment was sound and his words sympathetic. But his 
long communing with the old-world generation evoked a 
jealous suspicion of his contemporaries. Although he was 
among the first to recognize the genius of Burns and AVords- 
worth, his feeling toward Scott, Byron, and Shelley was one 
of dislike, nor did he show any interest in the contemporane- 
ous literature of the Continent. 

The least fugitive of Lamb's works are the inimitable Es- 
says of Elia, begun in 1820, and contributed at the rate of one 
or two a month to the London Magazine. He borrowed the 



INTBOBUCTION. 9 

nom de plume of Elia from the name of an Italian who had 
been a fellow-clerk in the South Sea House, thirty years be- 
fore. Here, more than anywhere else, is revealed, without a 
touch of vanity or self-assertion, the personality of the author, 
the man Charles Lamb. Here is felt the childlikeness of his 
genius in the subtle simplicity and picturesqueness of his vo- 
cabulary, and in his sense of pleasure in the homely and fa- 
miliar. Here are reflected his odd ways, his exquisite fooling, 
his pathos, and his large-hearted tolerance of human follies. 
Here, free from the limitations of poetry, story, and drama, 
he is at his best. I^or do the Last Essays of Ella, published 
ten years later, show any failing in virility or subtle apprecia- 
tion of men and things. 

Lamb's versatility of sympathy gave him a wide range of 
subject, and his treatment was correspondingly broad. Flashes 
of sparkling humor are followed by passages charged with 
philosophical insight or tender meditation. The editors of 
the London Magazine seem to have set no limitation to the 
choice of subject, and Lamb, following the mood of the mo- 
ment, has written with captivating naturalness of whatever 
lay nearest his heart. Nothing but the sure touch of genius, 
the virile force of his own nature, could infuse life and color 
into themes so slight and commonplace as Ears, Roast Pig, 
Chimney Sweeps. He wrote for writing's sake, and his works 
consequently do not bear the stamp of the professional author, 
but are rather the fruit of a busy man's hours of relaxation. 
He always regarded literature as his by-play. It was not easy, 
however, for him to bring himself to write, for he was not in- 
spired by any purpose to benefit the world, nor was he spurred 
by pecuniary necessity or literary ambition. "Disinterested 
servant of literature," he did not, like Coleridge, Wordsworth, 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

and Shelley, share in the unrest of the age. Pater says, " The 
exercise of his gift, of his literary art, came to gild or sweeten 
a life of monotonous labor, and seemed, so far as regarded 
others, no very important thing ; in no way concerned with 
the turning of the tide of the great world." He who would 
know Charles Lamb through the pages of Ella must submit 
to the caprice of his wanderings. An essay called Old China 
may prove an informal talk on the joys of moderate poverty, 

or Mackery End in H sliire may mean a singularly fine 

portrayal of his sister Mary. 

In 1825 Lamb retired from the India House, and through 
the kindness of the directors received a pension of £450, two- 
thirds of his salary. He had never ceased to rebel against 
the " drudgery of the desk's dead wood." He wrote Words- 
worth in 1822, " I grow ominously tired of official confine- 
ment. Thirty years have I served the Philistines and my 
neck is not subdued to the yoke." 

During the last nine years of his life he lived at Islington, 
at Enfield, and finally at Edmonton. He died in December, 
1833, and was buried in the little Edmonton churchyard. 
William Watson has written a suggestive sonnet. At the Grave 
of Charles Lamh, in Edmonton ; " — 

" Not here, O teeming City, was it meet 
Thy lover, thy most faithful, should repose; 
But where the multitudinous life-tide flows 
Whose ocean-murmur was to him more sweet 
Than melody of hirds at morn, or bleat 
Of flocks in Spring-time, there should Earth enclose 
His earth, amid thy thronging joys and woes. 
There, 'neath the music of thy million feet. 
In love of thee this lover knew no peer. 
Thine eastern or thy western fane had made 



INTRODUCTION. 11 

Fit habitation for his noble shade. 

Mother of mightier, nurse of none more dear, 

Not here, in rustic exile, O not here, 

Thy Elia like an alien should be laid." 

Friendships counted for much in the life of Charles Lamb. 
He liked men, and he was always able to get at the best they 
had in them. His largeness of heart drew about him a circle 
of what he called " friendly harpies." Although he some- 
times'^ complained of their intrusion upon his scant leisure, his 
fresh and unspoiled heart never withheld hospitality, especially 
to his early friends. " Oh ! it is pleasant," he writes, " as it 
is rare, to find the same arm linked in yours at forty which at 
thirteen helped it turn over the Cicero De Amicitia or some 
other tale of antique friendship which the young heart was 
burning even then to anticipate." During their years of resi- 
dence in the Temple, Charles and Mary Lamb kept open house 
on Wednesday evenings. Few of the most famous men of the 
time, but many of the most original litterateurs, gathered 
in these homely rooms, where cold meats and abundant porter 
always stood on the sideboard. Lamb confessed that he 
" never greatly cared for the society of what are called good 
people." Coleridge, " the archangel, a little damaged," some- 
times came to their parties, and poured forth brilliant mono- 
logue. Here Hazlitt gave passionate utterance to his art 
theories. Here Leigh Hunt, the social reformer and man of 
exquisite fancies, came. Here the Opium Eater came, his va- 
pory loves and hates giving way before Elia's volley of puns 
and problems. Here the philosopher Godwin came to unfold 
startling theories. Here came Barry Cornwall, Bernard Bar- 
ton, Crabb Robinson, Southey, and Wordsworth, the last too 
sure of his lyric gift to doubt his immortality. Here Miss 



12 INTRODUCTION. 

Kelly and Charles Kemble were likely to drop in after the 
play. And there was that remarkable woman, Mary Lamb, 
whose keen judgment and eager intellect made her opinion 
valued ; and in the midst of all, the subtle humorist, the simple 
and unpretentious host, whose blithe surface never betrayed 
the shadow of impending sorrow. His friend Barry Cornwall, 
in Charles Lamb: a Memoir, has left us this description of 
his personal appearance : " Small and spare in person, and 
with small legs ('immaterial legs,' Hood called them), he had 
a dark complexion ; dark, curling hair, almost black ; and a 
grave look, lightening up occasionally, and capable of sudden 
merriment. His laugh was seldom excited by jokes merely 
ludicrous ; it was never spiteful ; and his quiet smile was 
sometimes inexpressibly sweet — perhaps it had a touch of 
sadness in it. His mouth was well shaped ; his lips tremulous 
with expression ; his brown eyes were quick, restless, and 
glittering ; and he had a grand head, full of thought. Leigh 
Hunt said that ' he had a head worthy of Aristotle.' Hazlitt 
calls it ' a fine Titian head, full of dumb eloquence,' Al- 
though sometimes strange in manner, he was thoroughly un- 
affected ; in serious matters thoroughly sincere. It was curious 
to observe the gradations in Lamb's manner to his various 
guests although it was courteous to all. With Hazlitt he 
talked as though they met the subject in discussion on equal 
terms. With Leigh Hunt he exchanged repartees ; to Words- 
worth he was almost respectful ; with Coleridge he was some- 
times jocose, sometimes deferring." 

It is not easy to analyze the homely magic of Charles 
Lamb's style, to say just what it is that pleases us, but we like 
it all the better for its sweet elusive savor. The emotion with 
which we regard him is intimate and personal. We feel that 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

he can never be as other men are ; that it is the unique indi- 
viduality of the man, as well as his loyal, self -forgetful life, 
which we love. Indeed, no more lovable figure appears in 
literary history than that of the dainty, whimsical essayist. 
One must come with kindred insight and sympathy to appre- 
ciate the personality shadowed forth in his works ; for it is 
only to the lover of that exquisite spirit that his prose yields 
all its sweetness. Wordsworth probably had his friend in mind 
when he wrote in A Poet 's Epitaph : — 

" But who is He, with modest looks, 
And clad in homely russet brown? 
He murmurs near the running brooks 
A music sweeter than their own. 
He is retired as noontide dew, 
Or fountain in a noon-day grove; 
And you must love him, ere to you 
He will seem worthy of your love." 



CEITICAL AND BIOGKAPHICAL EEFERENCES. 



BiOGRAPHiA LiTBRARiA. By S. T. ColericTge. 1842. 

Memorial, of Charles Lamb. By T. N. Talfourd. 1848. 

Recollections of Charles Lamb. By Thomas DeQuincey. 1850. 

Charles Lamb and Sydney Smith. Atlantic Mo?ithly. March, 
1859. 

Charles Lamb. By Thomas Craddock. 1864. 

About Charles Lamb: his Friends and his Books. Dublin 
University Magazine. 1865. 

Charles Lamb : a Memoir. By Barry Cornwall. 1866. 

Memoirs of William Hazlitt. 1867. 

Diary of Henry Crabb Robinson. 1869. 

Authors at Work: Charles Lamb at his Desk. By C. Pebody. 
1872. 

Mary and Charles Lamb. By W. Carew Hazlitt. 1874. 

Personal Recollections op Lamb, Hazlitt and others. Ed- 
ited by R. H. Stoddard. 1875. 

The Life, Letters, and Writings of Charles Lamb. Edited 
by Percy Fitzgerald. 1876. 

Concerning Charles Lamb. Scribner's Magazine. March, 1876. 

Recollections of Writers. By Char.les and Mary Cowden Clarke. 
1878. 

Charles Lamb: and Some of his Companions. Miscellaneous 
Prose Works. Vol. I. By Bulwer-Lytton. 

Charles and Mary Lamb. By John Buckle. 

Charles Lamb. By Alfred Ainger. (English Men of Letters Se- 
ries.) 1882. 

Life of Mary Lamb. By Annie Gilchrist. (Famous Women, Se- 
ries II.) 1883. 

Characteristics. A. P. Russell. 1884. 

Personal Traits of British Authors. By E. T. Mason. 1885. 

Obiter Dicta. By Augustine Birrell. 1887. 

Charles Lamb and Dr. Johnson. Temple Bar, 86, 237. 

The Letters of Charles Lamb. Newly arranged, with additions. 
Edited by A. Ainger. 1888. 

In the Footprints of Charles Lamb. By Benjamin Ellis Mar- 
tin. 1890. 

Res Judicatae. By Augustine Birrell. 1892. 

Lamb, Webster, and Swinburne. Neio Revieio, 8, 96. 

Studies of the Stage. By Brander Matthews. 1894. 

English Lands, Letters, and Kings. By D. G. Mitchell. 1895. 

Mr. Charles Lamb of the India House. Living Age, 212, 333. 

14 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



OXFORD IN THE YACATIOK. 



Casting a preparatory glance at the bottom of this 
article — as the wary connoisseur in prints, with cursory 
eye (which, while it reads, seems as though it read not), 
never fails to consult the quis sGidpsit in the corner, be- 
fore he pronounces some rare piece to be a Yivares or a 5 
Woollett — methinks I hear you exclaim, Eeader, Who 
is Ella ? 

Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some 
half-forgotten humors of some old clerks defunct, in an 
old house of business, long since gone to decay, doubt- 10 
less you have already set me down in your mind as 
one of the self-same college — a votary of the desk — a 
notched and crop scrivener — one that sucks his suste- 
nance, as certain sick people are said to do, through a 
quill. 15 

Well, I do agnize something of the sort. I confess 
that it is my humor, my fancy — in the forepart of the 
day, when the mind of your man of letters requires some 

15 



16 CHARLES LAMB. 

relaxation (and none better than such as at first sight 
seems most abhorrent from his beloved studies) — to 
while away some good hours of my time in the contem- 

■ plation of indigoes, cottons, raw silks, piece-goods, flow- 

5 ered or otherwise. In the first place . . . and then it 
sends you home with such increased appetite to your 
books . . . not to say, that your outside sheets, and 
waste wrappers of foolscap, do receive into them, most 
kindly and naturally, the impression of sonnets, epi- 

10 grams, essays — so that the very parings of a counting- 
house are, in some sort, the setting up of an author. 
The enfranchised quill, that has plodded all the morning 
among the cart-rucks of figures and ciphers, frisks and 
curvets so at its ease over the flowery carpet-ground of 

15 a midnight dissertation. It feels its promotion. ... So 
that you see, upon the whole, the literary dignity of Mia 
is very little, if at all, compromised in the condescension. 
Not that, in my anxious detail of the many commodi- 
ties incidental to the life of a public office, I would be 

20 thought blind to certain flaws, which a cunning carper 
might be able to pick in this Joseph's vest. And here 
I must have leave, in the fulness of my soul, to regret 
the abolition, and doing-away-with altogether, of those 
consolatory interstices, and sprinklings of freedom, 

25 through the four seasons, — the red-letter days, now 
become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days. 
There was Paul and Stephen and Barnabas — 

*' Andrew and John, men famous in old times " 



ESSAYS OF ELI A. 17 

— we were used to keep all their days lioly, as long 
back as I was at school at Christ's. I remember their 
effigies, by the same token, in the old Baskett Prayer 
Book. There hung Peter in his uneasy posture — holy 
Bartlemy in the troublesome act of flaying, after the 5 
famous Marsyas by Spagnoletti. I honored them all, 
and could almost have wept the defalcation of Iscariot 

— so much did we love to keep holy memories sacred ; 
- — only methought I a little grudged at the coalition of 
the better Jude with Simon — clubbing (as it were) their lO 
sanctities together, to make up one poor gaudy-day be- 
tween them — as an economy unworthy of the dispensa- 
tion. 

These were bright visitations in a scholar's and a 
clerk's life — '^ far off their coming shone." I was as 15 
good as an almanac in those days. I could have told 
you such a saint's day falls out next week, or the week 
after. Peradventure the Epiphany, by some periodical 
infelicity, would, once in six years, merge in a Sabbath. 
Now am I little better than one of the profane. Let 20 
me not be thought to arraign the wisdom of my civil 
superiors, who have judged the further observation of 
these holy tides to be papistical, superstitious. Only in 
a custom of such long standing, methinks, if their Holi- 
nesses the Bishops had, in decency, been first sounded 25 

— but I am wading out of my depths. I am not the 
man to decide the limits of eivil and ecclesiastical 
authority; I am plain Elia — no Selden, nor Arch- 
bishop Usher, though at present in the thick of their 



18 CHARLES LAMB. 

books, here in the heart of learning, under the shadow 
of the mighty Bodley. 

I can here play the gentleman, enact the student. To 
such a one as myself, who has been defrauded in his 

5 young years of the sweet food of academic institution, 
nowhere is so pleasant to while away a few idle weeks at 
as one or other of the Universities. Their vacation, too, 
at this time of the year falls in so pat with ours. Here 
I can take my walks unmolested, and fancy myself of 

10 what degree or standing I please. I seem admitted ad 
eundem, I fetch up past opportunities. I can rise at 
the chapel -bell, and dream that it rings for 7ne. In 
moods of humility I can be a Sizar, or a Servitor. 
When the peacock vein rises, I strut a Gentleman Com- 

15 moner. In graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts. 
Indeed, I do not think I am much unlike that respectable 
character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed- 
makers in spectacles, drop a bow or a curtsy, as I pass, 
wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. I go 

20 about in black, which favors the notion. Only in Christ 
Church reverend quadrangle, I can be content to pass 
for nothing short of a Seraphic Doctor. 

The walks at these times are so much one's own, — 
the tall trees of Christ's, the groves of Magdalen ! The 

25 halls deserted, and with open doors inviting one to slip 
in unperceived, and pay a devoir to some Founder, or 
noble or royal Benefactress (that should have been ours), 
whose portrait seems to smile upon their overlooked 
beadsman, and to adopt me for their own. Then, to 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 19 

take a peep in by the way at the butteries and sculler- 
ies, redolent of antique hospitality ; the immense caves 
of kitchens, kitchen fireplaces, cordial recesses ; ovens 
whose first pies were baked four centuries ago; and 
spits which have cooked for Chaucer ! Not the meanest 5 
minister among the dishes but is hallowed to me through 
his imagination, and the Cook goes forth a Manciple. 

Antiquity ! thou wondrous charm, what art thou, 
that being nothing, art everything ? When thou wert, 
thou wert not antiquity — then thou wert nothing, but 10 
hadst a remoter antiquity, as thou calledst it, to look 
back to with blind veneration; thou thyself being to 
thyself flat, jejune, modern! What mystery larks in 
this retroversion? or what half Januses^ are we, that 
cannot look forward with the same idolatry with which 15 
we forever revert ! The mighty future is as nothing, 
being everything ! the past is everything, being nothing ! 

What were thy dark ages? Surely the sun rose as 
brightly then as now, and man got him to his work in 
the morning ? Why is it we can never hear mention of 20 
them without an accompanying feeling, as though a pal- 
pable obscure had dimmed the face of things, and that 
our ancestors wandered to and fro groping! 

Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what do most 
arride and solace me, are thy repositories of mouldering 25 
learning, thy shelves — 

Wliat a place to be in is an old library ! It seems as 
though all the souls of all the writers, that have be- 
1 Januses of one face. — Sir Thomas Browne. 



20 CHARLES LAMB. 

queatlied their labors to these Bodleians, were reposing 
here as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not 
want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding- 
sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to in- 

5 hale learning, walking amid their foliage ; and the odor 
of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the 
first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid 
the happy orchard. 

Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder repose 

10 of MSS. Those varoe lectiones, so tempting to the more 
erudite palates, do but disturb and unsettle my fpath. 
I am no Herculanean raker. The credit of the three 
witnesses might have slept unimpeached for me. I 
leave these curiosities to Porson, and to G-. D. — whom, 

15 by the way, I found busy as a moth over some rotten 
archive, rummaged out of some seldom-explored press, 
in a nook at Oriel. With long poring, he is grown al- 
most into a book. He stood as passive as one by the 
side of the old shelves. I longed to new coat him in 

20 russia, and assign him his place. He might have mus- 
tered for a tall Scapula. 

D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats of learning. 
No inconsiderable portion of his moderate fortune, I ap- 
prehend, is consumed in journeys between them and 

25 Clifford's-inn, where, like a dove on the asp's nest, he 
has long taken up his unconscious abode, amid an in- 
congruous assembly of attorneys, attorneys' clerks, ap- 
paritors, promoters, vermin of the law, among whom he 
sits, " in calm and sinless peace." The fangs of the law 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 21 

pierce him not — tlie winds of litigation blow over his 
humble chambers — the hard sheriff's officer moves his 
hat as he passes — legal nor illegal discourtesy touches 
him — none thinks of offering violence or injustice to 
him — you would as soon "strike an abstract idea." 5 

D. has been engaged, he tells me, through a course of 
laborious years, in an investigation into all curious mat- 
ter connected with the two Universities ; and has lately 
lit upon a MS. collection of charters, relative to C — — , 
by which he hopes to settle some disputed points — par- 10 
ticularly that long controversy between them as to prior- 
ity of foundation. The ardor with which he engages in 
these liberal pursuits, I am afraid, has not met with all 

the encouragement it deserved, either here or at C . 

Your caputs, and heads of colleges, care less 'than any- 15 
body else about these questions. — Contented to suck the 
milky fountains of their Alma Maters, without inquir- 
ing into the venerable gentlewoman's years, they rather 
hold such curiosities to be impertinent — unreverend. 
They have their good glebe lands in manu, and care not 20 
much to rake into the title-deeds. I gather at least so 
much from other sources, for D. is not a man to complain. 

D. started like an unbroken heifer when I interrupted 
him. A priori it was not very probable that we should 
have met in Oriel. But D. would have done the same 25 
had I accosted him on the sudden in his own walks in 
Clifford' s-inn, or in the Temple. In addition to a pro- 
voking short-sightedness (the effect of late studies and 
watching at the midnight oil), D. is the most absent of 



22 CHARLES LAMB. 

men. He made a call the other morning at our friend 
M.'s in Bedford-square ; and, finding nobody at home, 
was ushered into the hall, where, asking for pen and 
ink, with great exactitude of purpose he enters me his 

5 name in the book — which ordinarily lies about in such 
places, to record the failures of the untimely or unfor- 
tunate visitor — and takes his leave with many cere- 
monies and professions of regret. Some two or three 
hours after, his walking destinies returned him into the 

10 same neighborhood again, and again the quiet image of 
the fireside circle at M.'s — Mrs. M. presiding at it like a 
Queen Lar, with pretty A. S. at her side — striking irre- 
sistibly on his fancy, he makes another call (forgetting 
that they were " certainly not to return from the country 

15 before that day week "), and disappointed a second time, 
inquires for pen and paper as before : again the book is 
brought, and in the line just above that in which he is 
about to print his second name (his re-script), his first 
name (scarce dry) looks out upon him like another Sosia, 

20 or as if a man should suddenly encounter his own dupli- 
cate ! The effect may be conceived. D. made many a 
good resolution against any such lapses in future. I 
hope he will not keep them too rigorously. 

For with G-. D. — to be absent from the body is 

25 sometimes (not to speak it profanely) to be present with 
the Lord. At the very time when, personally encounter- 
ing thee, he passes on with no recognition, — or, being 
stopped, starts like a thing surprised, at that moment, 
Eeader, he is on Mount Tabor — or Parnassus — or co- 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



23 



sphered with Plato — or, with Harrington, framing " im- 
mortal commonwealths " — devising some plan of ame- 
lioration to thy country, or thy species — peradventure 
meditating some individual kindness or courtesy, to be 
done to thee thyself, the returning consciousness of which 5 
made him to start so guiltily at thy obtruded personal 

presence. 

[D. commenced life, after a course of hard study m 
the house of '^ pure Emanuel," as usher to a knavish fa- 
natic schoolmaster at * * ^, at a salary of eight pounds 10 
per annum, with board and lodging. Of this poor sti- 
pend, he never received above half in all the laborious 
years he served this man. He tells a pleasant anecdote, 
that when poverty, staring out at his ragged knees, has 
sometimes compelled him, against the modesty of his 15 
nature, to hint at arrears. Dr. * =^ ^ would take no imme- 
diate notice, but after supper, when the school was called 
together to evensong, he would never fail to introduce 
some instructive homily against riches, and the corrup- 
tion of the heart occasioned through the desire of them 20 
— ending with '' Lord, Keep Thy servants, above all 
things, from the heinous sin of avarice. Having food 
and "raiment, let us therewithal be content. Give me 
Agur's wish" — and the like — which, to the little audi- 
tory, sounded like a doctrine full of Christian prudence 25 
and simplicity, but to poor D. was a receipt in full for 
that quarter's demand at least. 

And D. has been underworking for himself ever since ; 
— drudging at low rates for unappreciating booksellers, 



24 CHARLES LAMB. 

— wasting his fine erudition in silent corrections of tlie 
classics, and in those unostentatious but solid services to 
learning which commonly fall to the lot of laborious 
scholars, who have not the heart to sell themselves to 

5 the best advantage. He has published poems, which do 
not sell, because their character is unobtrusive, like his 
own, and because he has been too much absorbed in 
ancient literature to know what the popular mark in 
poetry is, even if he could have hit it. And, therefore, 

10 his verses are properly what he terms them, crochets ; 
voluntaries ; odes to liberty and spring 5 effusions ; little 
tributes and offerings, left behind him upon tables and 
window-seats at parting from friends' houses ; and from 
all the inns of hospitality, where he had been courte- 

15 ously (or but tolerably) received in his pilgrimage. If 
his muse of kindness halt a little behind the strong lines 
in fashion in this excitement-loving age, his prose is the 
best of the sort in the world, and exhibits a faithful 
transcript of his own healthy, natural mind, and cheer- 

20 ful, innocent tone of conversation.] 

D. is delightful anywhere, but he is at the best in 
such places as these. He cares not much for Bath. He 
is out of his element at Buxton, at Scarborough, or Har- 
rowgate. The Cam and the Isis are to him '^ better than 

25 all the waters of Damascus." On the Muses' hill he is 
hajjpy, and good, as one of the Shepherds on the Delec- 
table Mountains ; and when he goes about with 3^ou to 
show you the halls and colleges, you. think you have 
with you the Interpreter at the House Beautiful. 



ESSAYS OF ELIA, 25 



THE TWO EACES OF MEN. 



The h-uman species, according to the best theory I can 
form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men 
who borrow and the men who lend. To these two origi- 
nal diversities may be reduced all those impertinent 
classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, 5 
black men, red men. All the dwellers upon earth, 
" Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites," flock hither, and 
do naturally fall in with one or other of these primary 
distinctions. The infinite superiority of the former, 
which I choose to designate as the great race, is dis- 10 
cernible in their figure, port, and a certain instinctive 
sovereignty. The latter are born degraded. '^ He shall 
serve his brethren." There is something in the air of 
one of this cast, lean and suspicious ; contrasting with 
the open, trusting, generous manners of the other. 15 

Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of all 
ages — Alcibiades — Ealstaff — Sir Eichard Steele — our 
late incomparable Brinsley — what a family likeness in 
all four ! 

What a careless, even deportment hath your bor- 20 
rower ! what rosy gills ! what a beautiful reliance on 
Providence doth he manifest taking no more thought 



26 CHAELES LAMB. 

than lilies ! Wliat contempt for money, — accounting it 
(yours and mine especially) no better than dross ! What 
a liberal confounding of those pedantic distinctions of 
meuvi and tuwrn ! or rather, what a noble simplification 

5 of language (beyond Tooke), resolving these supposed 
opposites into one clear, intelligible pronoun-adjective ! 
— What near approaches doth he make to the primitive 
community, — to the extent of one-half of the principle 
at least. 

10 He is the true taxer who " calleth all the world up to 
be taxed ; " and the distance is as vast between him and 
one of us, as subsisted between the Augustan Majesty 
and the poorest obolary Jew that paid it tribute-pittance 
at Jerusalem ! — His exactions, too, have such a cheer- 

15 ful, voluntary air ! So far removed from your sour pa- 
rochial or state-gatherers, — those inkhorn varlets, who 
carry their want of welcome in their faces ! He cometh 
to you with a smile, and troubleth you with no receipt ; 
confining himself to no set season. Every day is his 

20 Candlemas, or his Feast of Holy Michael. He applieth 
the lene tormentum. of a pleasant look to your purse — 
which to that gentle warmth expands her silken leaves, 
as naturally as the cloak of the traveller, for which sun 
and wind contended ! He is the true Propontic which 

25 never ebbeth ! The sea which taketh handsomely at 
each man's hand. In vain the victim, whom he de- 
lighteth to honor, struggles with destiny ; he is in the 
net. Lend therefore cheerfully, man ordained to 
lend — that thou lose not in the end, with thy worldly 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 27 

penny, the reversion promised. Combine not preposter- 
ously in thine own person the penalties of Lazarus and 
of Dives ! — but, when thou seest the proper authority 
coming, meet it smilingly, as it were half-way. Come, 
a handsome sacrifice ! See how^ light he makes of it ! 5 
Strain not courtesies with a noble enemy. 

Eeflections like the foregoing were forced upon my 
mind by the death of my old friend, Kalph Bigod, Esq., 
who parted this life, on Wednesday evening ; dying, as 
he had lived, without much trouble. He boasted him- lo 
self a descendant from mighty ancestors of that name, 
who heretofore held ducal dignities in this realm. In 
his actions and sentiments he belied not the stock to 
w^hich he pretended. Early in life he found himself in- 
vested with ample revenues ; which, with that noble dis- 15 
interestedness which I have noticed as inherent in men 
of the great race, he took almost immediate measures 
entirely to dissipate and bring to nothing ; for there is 
something revolting in the idea of a king holding a pri- 
vate purse ; and the thoughts of Bigod were all regal. 20 
Thus furnished by the very act of disfurnishment ; get- 
ting rid of the cumbersome luggage of riches, more apt 
(as one sings) — 

" To slacken virtue, and abate her edge 
Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise," 25 

he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great enter- 
prise, '' borrowing and to borrow ! " 

In his periegesis, or triumphant progress throughout 



28 CHARLES LAMB. 

this island, it has been calculated that he laid a tithe 
part of the inhabitants under contribution. I reject this 
estimate as greatly exaggerated ; — but having had the 
honor of accompanying my friend divers times, in his 

5 perambulations about this vast city, I own I was greatly 
struck at first with the prodigious number of faces we 
met, who claimed a sort of respectful acquaintance with 
us. He was one day so obliging as to explain the phe- 
nomenon. It seems, these Avere his tributaries ; feeders 

10 of his exchequer ; gentlemen, his good friends (as he 
was pleased to express himself), to whom he had occa- 
sionally been beholden for a loan. Their multitudes 
did no way disconcert him. He rather took a pride in 
numbering them ; and, with Comus, seemed pleased to 

15 be " stocked with so fair a herd." 

With such sources, it was a wonder how he contrived 
to keep his treasury always empty. He did it by force 
of an aphorism, which he had often in his mouth, that 
" money kept longer than three days stinks." So he 

20 made use of it while it was fresh. A good part he 
drank away (for he was an excellent toss-pot) ; some 
he gave away, the rest he threw away, literally tossing 
and hurling it violently from him — as boys do burrs, 
or as if it had been infectious, — into ponds, or ditches, 

25 or deep holes, inscrutable cavities of the earth ; or he 
would bury it (where he would never seek it again) by 
a river's side under some bank, which (he would face- 
tiously observe) paid no interest — but out away from 
him it must go peremptorily, as Hagar's offspring into 



JESS ATS OF ELIA. 29 

the wilderness, while it was sweet. He never missed it. 
The streams were perennial which fed his fisc. When 
new supplies became necessary ; the first person that had 
the felicity to fall in with him, friend or stranger, was 
sure to contribute to the deficiency. For Bigod had an 5 
undeniahle way with him. He had a cheerful, open ex- 
terior, a quick jovial eye, a bald forehead, just touched 
with gray (cana fides). He anticipated no excuse, and 
found none. And, waiving for a while my theory as to 
the great race, I would put it to the most untheorizing 10 
reader, who may at times have disposable coin in his 
pocket, whether it is not more repugnant to the kindli- 
ness of his nature to refuse such a one as I am describ- 
ing, than to say no to a poor petitionary rogue (your 
bastard borrower), who, by his mumping visnomy, tells 15 
you that he expects nothing better ; and, therefore, 
whose preconceived notions and expectations you do in 
reality so much less shock in the refusal. 

When I think of this man ; — ^his fiery glow of heart ; 
his swell of feeling ; how magnificent, how ideal he was ; 20 
how great at the midnight hour ; — and when I compare 
with him the companions with whom I have associated 
since, I grudge the saving of a few idle ducats, and 
think that I am fallen into the society of lenders and 
little men. 25 

To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased 
in leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there is 
a class of alienators more formidable than that which I 
have touched upon ; I mean your horroioers of books — 



30 CHARLES LAMB. 

those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry 
of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. There is Com- 
berbatch, matchless in his depredations ! 

That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like 

5 a great eye-tooth knocked out — (you are now with me 
in my little back study in Bloom sbury, reader !) — 
with the huge Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the 
Guildhall giants, in their reformed posture, guardant of 
nothing), once held the tallest of my folios, Ojoera Bona- 

10 venturce, choice and massy divinity, to w^hich its tw^o 
supporters (school divinity also, but of a lesser calibre, 

— Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas), showed but as dwarfs, 

— itself an Ascapart ! — that Comberbatch abstracted 
upon the faith of a theory he holds, which is more easy, 

15 I confess, for me to suffer by than to refute, namely, 
that " the title to property in a book (my Bonaventure, 
for instance), is in exact ratio to the claimant's powers 
of understanding and appreciating the same." Should 
he go on acting upon this theory, which of our shelves is 

20 safe ? 

The slight vacuum in the left-hand case — two shelves 
from the ceiling, scarcely distinguishable but by the 
quick eye of a loser — was whilom the commodious rest- 
ing-place of Brown on Urn Burial. C. will hardly allege 

25 that he knows more about that treatise than I do, w4io 
introduced it to him, and was, indeed, the first (of the 
moderns) to discover its beauties — but so have I known 
a foolish lover to praise his mistress in the presence of a 
rival more qualified to carry her off than himself. Just 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 31 

below, Dodsley's dramas want their fourth volume, where 
Vittoria Corombona is. The remaining nine are as dis- 
tasteful as Priam's refuse sons, when the Fates borrowed 
Hector. Here stood the Anatomy of Melancholy, in sober 
state. There loitered The Comiolete Angler ; quiet as in 5 
life, by some stream side. In yonder nook, John Buncle, 
a widower-volume, with " eyes closed," mourns his rav- 
ished mate. 

One justice I must do my friend, that if he sometimes, 
like the sea, sweeps away a treasure, at another time, lo 
sea-like, he throws up as rich an equivalent to match it. 
I have a small under-collection of this nature (my friend's 
gatherings in his various calls), picked up, he has for- 
gotten at what odd places, and deposited with as little 
memory at mine. I take in these orphans, the twice- 15 
deserted. These proselytes of the gate are welcome as 
the true Hebrews. There they stand in conjunction; 
natives and naturalized. The latter seem as little dis- 
posed to inquire out their true lineage as I am — I charge 
no warehouse-room for these deodands, nor shall ever 20 
put myself to the ungentlemanly trouble of advertising 
a sale of them to pay expenses. 

To lose a volume to C. carries some sense and mean- 
ing in it. You are sure that he will make one hearty 
meal on your viands, if he can give no account of the 25 
platter after it. Bu.t what moved thee, wayward, spite- 
ful K., to be so importunate to carry off with thee, in 
spite of tears and adjurations to thee to forbear, the 
Letters of that princely woman, the thrice noble Mar- 



32 CHARLES LAMB. 

garet Newcastle? — knowing at the time, and knowing 
that I knew also, thou most assuredly wouldst never 
turn over one leaf of the illustrious folio : — what but 
the mere spirit of contradiction, and childish love of 
5 getting the better of thy friend ? — Then, worst cut of 
all ! to transport it with thee to the Galilean land — 

"Unworthy land to harbor such a sweetness, 
A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt, 
Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's wonder! " 

10 — hadst thou not thy play -books, and books of jests 
and fancies, about thee, to keep thee merry,, even as 
thou keepest all companies with thy quibs and mirthful 
tales ? Child of the Green-room, it was unkindly done 
of thee. Thy wife, too, that part-French, better-part 

15 Englishwoman ! — that she could fix upon no other 
treatise to bear away, in kindly token of remembering 
us, than the works of Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke — of 
which no Frenchman, nor woman of France, Italy, or 
England, was ever by nature constituted to comprehend 

20 a tittle ! — Was there 7iot Ziminermann on Solitude ? 

Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate 
collection, be shy of showing it ; or if thy heart over- 
floweth to lend them, lend thy books ; but let it be to 
such a one as S. T. C. — he will return them (generally 

25 anticipating the time appointed) with usury ; enriched 
with annotations tripling their value. I have had ex- 
perience. Many are these precious MSS. of his — (in 
matter oftentimes, and almost in quantity not unfre- 



ESSAYS OF ELIA, 33 

quently, vying with the originals) in no very clerkly 
hand — legible in my Daniel ; in old Burton ; in Sir 
Thomas Browne ; and those abstruser cogitations of the 
Greville, now, alas ! wandering in Pagan lands. I coun- 
sel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy library, against 
S. T. C. 



34 CHARLES LAMB, 



NEW YEAE'S EVE. 



Every man hath two birthdays : two days, at least, 
in every year, wliich set him upon revolving the lapse 
of time, as it affects his mortal duration. The one is 
that which in an especial manner he termeth his. In 

5 the gradual desuetude of old observances, this custom 
of solemnizing our proper birthday hath nearly passed 
away, or is left to children, who reflect nothing at all 
about the matter, nor understand anything in it beyond 
cake and orange. But the birth of a ISTew Year is of an 

10 interest too wide to be pretermitted by king or cobbler. 
No one ever regarded the first of January with indiffer- 
ence. It is that from which all date their time, and 
count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our com- 
mon Adam. 

15 Of all sound of all bells — (bells, the music nighest 
bordering upon heaven) — most solemn and touching is 
the peal which rings out the Old Year. I never hear it 
without a gathering up of my mind to a concentration 
of all the images that have been diffused over the past 

20 twelvemonth ; all I have done or suffered, performed or 
neglected -^ — in that regretted tim.e. I begin to know its 
worth, as when a person dies. It takes a personal color j 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 35 

nor was it a poetical flight in a contemporary, when he 
exclaimed, 

"I saw the skirts of the departing Year." 

It is no more than what in sober sadness every one of 
us seems to be conscious of, in that awful leave-taking. 5 
I am sure I felt it, and all felt it with me, last night ; 
though some of my companions affected rather to mani- 
fest an exhilaration at the birth of the coming year, than 
any very tender regrets for the decease of its predeces- 
sor. But I am none of those who — 10 

" Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest." 

I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novelties; new 
books, new faces, new years — from some mental twist 
which makes it difficult in me to face the prospective. 
I have almost ceased to hope, and am sanguine only 15 
in the prospects of other (former) years. I plunge into 
foregone visions and conclusions. I encounter pellmell 
with past disappointments. I am armor-proof against 
old discouragements. I forgive, or overcome in fancy, 
old adversaries. I play over again /(9?^/o ye, as the game- 20 
sters phrase it, games, for which I once paid so dear. I 
would scarce now have any of those untoward accidents 
and events of my life reversed. I would no more alter 
them than the incidents of some well-contrived novel. 
Methinks it is better that I should have pined away 25 
seven of my goldenest years, when I was thrall to the 
fair hair, and fairer eyes, of Alice W n, than that 



36 CHARLES LAMB. 

so passionate a love adventure should be lost. It was 
better that our family should have missed that legacy, 
which old Dorrell cheated us of, than that I should 
have at this moment two thousand pounds m banco, and 

5 be without the idea of that specious old rogue. 

In a degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity to 
look back upon those early days. Do I advance a para- 
dox, when I say, that, skipping over the intervention of 
forty years, a man may have leave to love himself, with- 

10 out the imputation of self-love ? 

If I know aught of myself, no one whose mind is in- 
trospective — and mine is painfully so — can have a less 
respect for his present identity, than I have for the man 
Elia. I know him to be light, and vain, and humorsome ; 

15 a notorious . . . ; addicted to ... ; averse from counsel, 
neither taking it nor offering it ; — ... beside ; a stam- 
mering buffoon ; what you will ; lay it on, and spare not; 
I subscribe to it all, and much more than thou canst be 
willing to lay at his door — but for the child Elia, that 

20 '' other me," there, in the background — I must take leave 
to cherish the remembrance of that young master — with 
as little reference, I protest, to this stupid changeling 
of five and forty, as if it had been a child of^ some 
other house, and not of my parents. I can cry over its 

25 patient smallpox at five and rougher medicaments. I 
can lay its poor fevered head upon the sick pillow at 
Christ's, and wake with it in surprise at the gentle 
posture of maternal tenderness hanging over it, that 
unknown had watched its sleep. I know how it shrank 



JESS AYS OF ELIA. 37 

from any the least color of falsehood. God help thee, 
Elia, how art thou changed ! — Thou art sophisticated. — 
I know how honest, how courageous (for a weakling) 
it was — how religious, how imaginative, how hopeful! 
From what have I not fallen, if the child I remember 5 
was indeed myself — and not some dissembling guar- 
dian, presenting a false identity, to give the rule to my 
unpractised steps, and regulate the tone of my moral 
being ! 

That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope of sym- 10 
pathy, in such retrospection, may be the symptom of 
some sickly idiosyncrasy. Or is it owing to another 
cause : simply, that being without wife or family, T 
have not learned to project myself enough out of my- 
self ; and having no offspring of my own to dally with, 15 
I turn back upon memory, and adopt my own early 
idea, as my heir and favorite ? If these speculations 
seem fantastical to thee, reader — (a busy man, per- 
chance), if I tread out of the way of thy sympathy, and 
am singularly conceited only, I retire, impenetrable to 20 
ridicule, under the phantom-cloud of Elia. 

The elders, with whom I was brought up, were of a 
character not likely to let slip the sacred observance of 
any old institution ; and the ringing out of the Old Year 
was kept by them with, circumstances of peculiar cere- 25 
mony. — In those days the sound of those midnight 
chimes, though it seemed to raise hilarity in all around 
me, never failed to bring a train of pensive imagery into 
my fancy. Yet I then scarce conceived what it meant. 



38 CHARLES LAMB. 

or thought of it as a reckoning that concerned me. Not 
childhood alone, but the young man till thirty, never 
feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it, indeed, 
and, if need were, he could preach a homily on the fra- 

5 gility of life ; but he brings it not home to himself, any 
more than in a hot June we can appropriate to our 
imagination the freezing days of December. But now, 
shall I confess a truth ? — I feel these audits but too 
powerfully. I begin to count the probabilities of my 

10 duration, and to grudge at the expenditure of moments 
and shortest periods, like misers' farthings. In pro- 
portion as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more 
count upon their periods, and would fain la}^ my inef- 
fectual finger upon the spoke of the great wheel. I am 

15 not content to pass away " like a weaver's shuttle." 
Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpal- 
atable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried 
with the tide, that smoothly bears human life to eter- 
nity ; and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I 

20 am in love with this green earth ; the face of town and 
country ; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet 
security of streets. I would set w^^ my tabernacle here. 
I am content to stand still at the age to which I am ar- 
rived ; I, and my friends ; to be no younger, no richer, 

25 no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age ; or 
drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave. — 
Any alteration, on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodg- 
ing, puzzles and discomposes me. My household-gods 
plant a terrible fixed foot, and are not rooted up with- 



JESS AYS OF JELIA. 39 

out blood. THej do not willingly seek Lavinian sliores. 
A new state of being staggers me. 

Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and 
summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the 
delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the 5 
cheerful glass, and candlelight, and fireside conversa- 
tions, and innocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself 
— do these things go out with life ? 

Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when 
you are pleasant with him ? 10 

And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios ! must I 
part with the intense delight of having you (huge arm- 
fuls) in my embraces ? Must kuowledge come to me, 
if it come at all, by some awkward experiment of intui- 
tion, and no longer by this familiar process of reading ? 15 

Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling 
indications which point me to them here, — the recog- 
nizable face — the " sweet assurance of a look" — ? 

In winter this intolerable disinclination to dying — 
to give it its mildest name — does more especially 20 
haunt and beset me. In a genial August noon, beneath 
a sweltering sky, death is almost problematic. At those 
times do such poor snakes as myself enjoy an immor- 
tality. Then we expand and bourgeon. Then we are 
as strong again, as valiant again, as wise again, and 25 
a great deal taller. The blast that nips and shrinks 
me, puts me in thoughts of death. All things allied to 
the insubstantial, wait upon that master-feeling ; cold, 
numbness, dreams, perplexity ; moonlight itself, with 



40 CHARLES LAMB. 

its shadowy ana spectral appearances, — that cold ghost 
of the sun, or Phoebus' sickly sister, like that innutri- 
tious one denounced in the Canticles : — I am none of 
her minions — I hold with the Persian. 

5 AVhatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, 
brings death into my mind. All partial evils, like 
humors, run into that capital plague-sore. — I have 
heard some profess an indifference to life. Such hail 
the end of their existence as a port of refuge ; and speak 

10 of the grave as of some soft arms, in which they may 
slumber as on a pillow. Some have wooed death — but 
out upon thee, I say, thou foul, ugly phantom ! I de- 
test, abhor, execrate, and (with Priar John) give thee to 
sixscore thousand devils, as in no instance to be excused 

15 or tolerated, but shunned as an universal viper ; to be 

branded, proscribed, and spoken evil of ! In no way 

can I be brought to digest thee, thou thin melancholy 

Fi'ivation, or more frightful and confounding Positive! 

Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of thee, 

20 are altogether frigid and insulting, like thyself. For 
what satisfaction hath a man, that he shall "lie down 
with kings and emperors in death," who in his lifetime 
never greatly coveted the society of such bedfellows ? 
— or, forsooth, that " so shall the fairest face appear ? " 

25 — why, to comfort me, must Alice W n be a goblin ? 

More than all, I conceive disgust at those impertinent 
and misbecoming familiarities inscribed upon your or- 
dinary tombstones. Every dead man must take upon 
himself to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that 



ESSAYS OF ELI A. 41 

^' Such as he now is I must shortly be." Not so shortly, 
friend, perhaps as thou imaginest. In the meantime I 
am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee. 
Know thy betters ! Thy New Years' days are past. I 
survive, a jolly candidate for 1821. Another cup of 5 
wine — and while that turncoat bell, that just now 
mournfully chanted the obsequies of 1820 departed, 
with changed notes lustily rings in a successor, let us 
attune to its peal the song made on a like occasion, by 
hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton. 10 

THE NEW YEAR. 

Hark, the cock crows, and yon bright star 

Tells us, the day himself s not far; 

And see where, breaking from the night, 

He gilds the western hills with light. 

With him old Janus doth appear, 15 

Peeping into the future year. 

With such a look as seems to say, 

The prospect is not good that way. 

Thus do we rise ill sights to see. 

And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy; 20 

When the prophetic fear of things 

A more tormenting mischief brings, 

More full of soul-tormenting gall 

Than direst mischiefs can befall. 

But stay! but stay! methinks my sight, 25 

Better inform' d by clearer light, 

Discerns sereneness in that brow. 

That all contracted seem'd but now. 

His revers'd face may show distaste. 

And frown upon the ills are past; 30 

But that which this way looks is clear. 

And smiles upon the New-born-Year. 



42 CHARLES LAMB. 

He looks too from a place so high, 
The Year lies open to his eye; 
And all the moments open are 
To the exact discoverer. 

5 Yet more and more he smiles upon 

The happy revolution. 
Why should we then suspect or fear 
The influences of a year, 
So smiles upon us the first morn, 

10 And speaks us good so soon as horn? 

Plague on't! the last was ill enough, 
This cannot hut make hetter proof; 
Or, at the worst, as we hrush'd through 
The last, why so we may this too; 

15 And then the next in reason shou'd 

Be suijerexcellently good: 
For the worst ills (we daily see) 
Have no more perpetuity 
Than the hest fortunes that do fall; 

20 Which also hrings us wherewithal 

Longer their heing to support, 
Than those do of the other sort; 
And who has one good year in three, 
And yet repines at destiny, 

25 Appears ungrateful in the case, 

And merits not the good he has. 
Then let us welcome the New Guest 
With lusty hrimmers of the hest; 
Mirth always should Good Fortune meet, 

30 And renders e'en Disaster sweet; 

And though the Princess turn her back, 
Let us hut line ourselves with sack. 
We hetter shall by far hold out, 
Till the next Year she face about. 



35 How say you, reader — do not these verses smack of 
the rough magnanimity of the old English vein ? Do 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 43 

tliey not fortify like a cordial ; enlarging the heart, and 
productive of sweet blood, and generous spirits in the 
concoction ? Where be those puling fears of death, 
just now expressed or affected ? — Passed like a cloud 
— absorbed in the purging sunlight of clear poetry — 
clean washed away by a wave of genuine Helicon, your 
only Spa for these hypochondries. — And now another 
cup of the generous ! and a merry New Year, and many 
of them to you all, my masters ! 



44 CHARLES LAMB, 



MES. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 



" A CLEAR fire, a clean hearth, and the rigor of the 
game." This was tlie celebrated luish of old Sarah 
Battle (now with God), who, next to her devotions, 
loved a good game of whist. She was none of your 

5 lukewarm gamesters, your half-and-half x^ia^y^rs, who 
have no objection to taking a hand, if you want one to 
make up a rubber ; who affirm that they have no pleas- 
ure in winning ; that they like to win one game and lose 
another ; that they can while away an hour very agree- 

10 ably at a card-table, but are indifferent Avhether they 
play or no ; and will desire an adversary, who has 
slipped a wrong card, to take it up and play another. 
These insufferable trifles are the curse of a table. One 
of these flies will spoil a whole pot. Of such it may be 

15 said that they do not play at cards, but only play at 
playing at them, 

Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She detested 
them, as I do, from her heart and soul, and would not, 
save upon a striking emergency, willingly seat herself 

20 at the same table with them. She loved a thorough- 
paced partner, a determined enemy. She took, and gave 
no concessions. She hated favors. She never made a 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 45 

revoke, nor ever passed it over in her adversary without 
exacting the utmost forfeiture. She fought a good fight : 
cut and thrust. She held not her good sword (her cards) 
^' lilie a dancer." She sate bolt upright ; and neither 
showed you her cards, nor desired to see yours. All 5 
people have their blind side — their superstitions ; and 
I have heard her declare, under the rose, that hearts 
was her favorite suit. 

I never in my life — and I knew Sarah Battle many 
of the best years of it — saw her take out her snuffbox 10 
when it was her turn to play ; or snuff a candle in the 
middle of a game ; or ring for a servant, till it was fairly 
over. She never introduced, or connived at, miscella- 
neous conversation during its process. As she emphat- 
ically observed, cards were cards ; and if I ever saw 15 
unmingled distaste in her fine last-century countenance, 
it was at the airs of a young gentleman of a literary 
turn, who had been with difficulty persuaded to take a 
hand ; and who, in his excess of candor, declared, that 
he thought there w^as no harm in unbending the mind 20 
now and then, after serious studies, in recreations of 
that kind ! She could not bear to have her noble oc- 
cupation, to which she wound up her faculties, con- 
sidered in that light. It was her business, her duty, 
the thing she came into the world to do, — and she did 25 
it. She unbent her mind afterwards, over a book. 

Pope was her favorite author ; his Rape of the Lock 
her favorite work. She once did me the favor to play 
over with me (with the cards) his celebrated game of 



46 CHARLES LAMB. 

Ombre in that poem ; and to explain to me how far it 
agreed with, and in what points it would be found to 
differ from, tradrille. Her illustrations were apposite 
and poignant ; and I had the pleasure of sending the 

5 substance of them to Mr. Bowles ; but I suppose they 
came too late to be inserted among his ingenious notes 
upon that author. 

Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first love ; but 
whist had engaged her maturer esteem. The former, she 

10 said, was showy and specious, and likely, to allure young 
persons. The uncertainty and quick shifting of part- 
ners — a thing which the constancy of whist abhors; — 
the dazzling supremacy and regal investiture of Spadille 
— absurd, as she justly observed, in the pure aristocracy 

15 of whist, where his crown and garter give him no proper 
power above his brother-nobility of the Aces ; — the giddy 
vanity, so taking to the inexperienced, of playing alone ; 
above all, the overpowering attractions of a Sa7is Pren- 
di^e Vole, — to the triumph of which there is certainly 

20 nothing parallel or approaching, in the contingencies of 
whist ; — all these, she would say, make quadrille a game 
of captivation to the young and enthusiastic. But whist 
was the solider game ; that was her word. It was a long 
meal ; not like quadrille, a feast of snatches. One or 

25 two rubbers might co-extend in duration with an even- 
ing. They gave time to form rooted friendships, to 
cultivate steady enmities. She despised the chance- 
started, capricious, and ever-fluctuating alliances of the 
other. The skirmishes of quadrille, she would say, re- 



JSSSAYS OF ELI A. 47 

minded her of the petty ephemeral embroilments of the 
little Italian states, depicted by Machiavel : perpetually 
changing postures and connections ; bitter foes to-day, 
sugared darlings to-morrow, kissing and scratching in a 
breath ; — but the wars of whist were comparable to the 5 
long, steady, deep-rooted, rational antipathies of the 
great Prench and English nations. 

A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired in 
her favorite game. There was nothing silly in it, like the 
nob in cribbage — nothing superfluous. No flushes — lo 
that most irrational of all pleas that a reasonable being 
can set up ; — that any one should claim four by virtue of 
holding cards of the same mark and color, without refer- 
ence to the playing of the game, or the individual worth 
or pretensions of the cards themselves ! She held this 15 
to be a solecism ; as pitiful an ambition at cards as al- 
literation is in authorship. She despised superficiality, 
and looked deeper than the colors of things. — Suits were 
soldiers, she would say, and must have a uniformity of 
array to distinguish them ; but what should we say to a 20 
foolish squire, who should claim a merit from dressing 
up his tenantry in red jackets, that never were to be 
marshalled, never to take the field ? — She even wished 
that whist were more simple than it is ; and, in my mind, 
would have stripped it of some appendages, which, in 25 
the state of human frailty, may be venially, and even 
commendably, allowed of. She saw no reason for decid- 
ing of the trump by the turn of the card. Why not one 
suit always trumps ? — Why two colors, when the mark 



48 CHARLES LAMB. 

of the suits would have sufficiently distinguished jhem 
without it ? 

" But the eye, my dear Madam, is agreeably refreshed 
with the variety. Man is not a creature of pure reason — ■ 

5 he must have his senses delightfully appealed to. We 
see it in Roman Catholic countries, where the music and 
the paintings draw in many to worship, whom your 
Quaker spirit of unsensualizing would have kept out. 
You yourself have a pretty collection of paintings, — but 

10 confess to me whether, walking in your gallery at Sand- 
ham, among those clear Vandykes, or among the Paul 
Potters in the anteroom, you ever felt your bosom glow 
with an elegant delight, at all comparable to that you 
have it in your power to experience most evenings over 

15 a well-arranged assortment of the court-cards ? The 
pretty antic habits, like heralds in a procession — the 
gay, triumph-assuring scarlets — the contrasting deadly- 
killing sables — the ^ hoary majesty of spades' — Pam 
in all his glory ! 

20 " AH these might be dispensed with ; and with their 
naked names upon the drab pasteboard, the game might 
go on very well, pictureless. But the beauty of cards 
would be extinguished forever. Stripped of all that is 
imaginative in them, they must degenerate into mere 

25 gambling. Imagine a dull deal board or drumhead to 
spread them on, instead of that nice verdant carpet 
(next to Nature's), the fittest arena for those courtly 
combatants to play their gallant jousts and tourneys in ! 
Exchange those delicately turned ivory markers — (work 



ESSAYS OF ELI A. 49 

of Chinese artist, unconscious of their symbol, or as 
profanely slighting their true application as the arrant- 
est Ephesian journeyman that turned out those little 
shrines for the goddess) — exchange them for little bits 
of leather (our ancestors' money), or chalk and a slate ! " 5 

The old lady, >vith a smile, confessed the soundness of 
my logic ; and to her approbation of my arguments on 
her favorite topic that evening, I have always fancied 
myself indebted for the legacy of a curious cribbage- 
board, made of the finest Sienna marble, which her mater- 10 
nal uncle (old Walter Plumer, whom I have elsewhere 
celebrated) brought with him from Florence ; this, and a 
trifle of five hundred pounds came to me at her death. 

The former bequest (which I do not least value) I 
have kept with religious care ; though she herself, to 15 
confess a truth, was never greatly taken with cribbage. 
It was an essentially vulgar game, I have heard her 
say, disputing with her uncle, who was very partial to 
it. She could never heartily bring her mouth to pro- 
nounce " 6^0," or ^^Thafs a go" She called it an un- 20 
grammatical game. The pegging teased her. I once 
knew her to forfeit a rubber (a five-dollar stake) because 
she would not take advantage of the turn-up knave, 
which would have given it her, but which she must have 
claimed by the disgraceful tenure of declaring " two 25 
for his lieelsy There is something extremely genteel 
in this sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a gentle- 
woman born. 

Piquet she held the best game at the cards for two 



50 CHARLES LAMB. 

persons, though she would ridicule the pedantry of the 
terms, — such as pique, repique, the capot, — they sa- 
vored (she thought) of affectation. But games for two, 
or even three, she never greatly cared for. She loved 

5 the quadrate, or square. She would argue thus : — 
Cards are warfare ; the ends are gain, with glory. But 
cards are war, in disguise of a sport ; when single adver- 
saries encounter, the ends jjroposed are too palpable. 
By themselves, it is too close a fight ; with spectators, it 

10 is not much bettered. No looker-on can be interested, 
except for a bet, and then it is a mere affair of money ; 
he cares not for your luck sympathetically/, or for your 
play. Three are still worse ; a mere naked war of every 
man against every man, as in cribbage, without league or 

15 alliance : or a rotation of petty and contradictory inter- 
ests, a succession of heartless leagues, and not much 
more hearty infractions of them, as in tradrille. But in 
square games (she "meant whist), all that is possible to 
be attained in card-playing is accomplished. There are 

20 the incentives of profit with honor, common to every 
species, though the latter can be but very imperfectly 
enjoyed in those other games, where the spectator is 
only feebly a participator. But the parties in whist are 
spectators and principals too. They are a theatre to 

25 themselves, and a looker-on is not wanted. He is rather 
worse than nothing, and an impertinence. Whist abhors 
neutrality, or interests beyond its sphere. You glory in 
some surprising stroke of skill or fortune, not because a 
cold — or even an interested — bystander witnesses it, 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 51 

but because your partner sympathizes in the contin- 
gency. You win for two. You triumph for two. Two 
are exalted. Two again are mortified ; which divides 
their disgrace, as the conjunction doubles (by taking off 
the invidiousness) your glories. Two losing to two are 5 
better reconciled than one to one in that close butchery. 
The hostile feeling is w^eakened by multiplying the 
channels. War becomes a civil game. By such rea- 
sonings as these the old lady was accustomed to defend 
her favorite pastime. lo 

No inducement could ever prevail upon her to play at 
any game, where chance entered into the composition, 
for nothing. Chance, she would argue, ■ — and here, 
again, admire the subtlety of her conclusion, — chance is 
nothing but where something else depends upon it. It 15 
is obvious that cannot be glory. What rational cause 
of exultation could it give to a man to turn up size ace 
a hundred times together by himself ? or before specta- 
tors, where no stake was depending? Make a lottery 
of a hundred thousand tickets with but one fortunate 20 
number, — and what possible principle of our nature, 
except stupid wonderment, could it gratify to gain that 
number as many times successively, without a prize ? 
Therefore she disliked the mixture of chance in back- 
gammon, where it was not played for money. She called 25 
it foolish, and those people idiots who were taken with 
a lucky hit under such circumstances. Games of pure 
skill were as little to her fancy. Played for a stake, 
they were a mere system of overreaching. Played for 



52 CHARLES LAMB. 

glory, they were a mere setting of one man's wit — his 
memory, or combination faculty rather — against an- 
other's ; like a mock engagement at a review, bloodless 
and profitless. She could not conceive a game wanting 

5 the spritely infusion of chance, the handsome excuses of 
good fortune. Two people playing at chess in a corner 
of a room, whilst whist was stirring in the centre, would 
inspire her with insufferable horror and ennui. Those 
well-cut similitudes of Castles and Knights, the imagery 

10 of the board, she would argue (and I think in this case 
justly), were entirely misplaced and senseless. Those 
hard head-contests can in no instance ally with the 
fancy. They reject form and color. A pencil and dry 
slate (she used to say) were the proper arena for such 

15 combatants. 

To those puny objectors against cards, as nurturing 
the bad passions, she would retort, that man is a gaming 
animal. He must be always trying to get the better in 
something or other ; that this passion can scarcely be 

20 more safely expended than upon a game at cards ; that 
cards are a temporary illusion ; in truth, a mere drama ; 
for we do but play at being mightily concerned, where a 
few idle shillings are at stake, yet, during the illusion, 
we are as mightily concerned as those whose stake is 

25 crowns and kingdoms. They are a sort of dream-fight- 
ing, much ado ; great battling, and little bloodshed ; 
mighty means for disproportioned ends ; quite as divert- 
ing, and a great deal more innoxious, than many of those 
more serious games of life which men play, without es- 

30 teeming them to be such. 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 53 

With great deference to the old lady's judgment in 
these matters, T think I have experienced some moments 
in my life, wheo playing at cards for nothing has even 
been agreeable. When I am in sickness, or not in the 
best spirits, I sometimes call for the cards ; play a game 5 
at piquet /or love with my cousin Bridget — Bridget Ella. 

I grant there is something sneaking in it ; but with a 
toothache or a sprained ankle, — when you are subdued 
and humble, — you are glad to put up with an inferior 
spring of action. lO 

There is such a thing in nature, I am convinced, as 
sick whist. 

I grant it is not the highest style of man — I depre- 
cate the manes of Sarah Battle — she lives not, alas ! to 
whom I should apologize. 15 

■ At such times, those terms, which my old friend ob- 
jected to, come in as something admissible. I love to get 
a tierce or a quatorze, though they mean nothing. I am 
subdued to an inferior interest. Those shadows of win- 
ning amuse me. 20 

That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I capotted 
her) — (dare I tell thee, how foolish I am ?) — I wished 
it might have lasted forever, though we gained nothing, 
and lost nothing ; though it was a mere shade of play, 
I would be content to go on in that idle folly forever. 25 
The pipkin should be ever boiling, that was to prepare 
the gentle lenitive to my foot, which Bridget was doomed 
to apply after the game was over ; and, as I do not much 
relish appliances, there it should ever bubble. Bridget 
and I should be ever playing. 30. 



54 CHARLES LAMB. 



A CHAPTEE ON EAES. 



I HAVE no ear. — 

Mistake me not, reader, nor imagine that I am by 
nature destitute of those exterior tv/in appendages, hang- 
ing ornaments, and (architecturally speaking) handsome 

5 volutes to the human capital. Better my mother had 
never borne me. I am, I. think, rather delicately than 
copiously provided with those conduits ; and I feel no 
disposition to envy the mule for his plenty, or the mole 
for her exactness, in those ingenious labyrinthine inlets 

10 — those indispensable side-intelligencers. 

Neither have I incurred, or done anything to incur, 
with Defoe, that hideous disfigurement, which constrained 
him to draw upon assurance — to feel " quite unabashed," 
and at ease upon that article. I was never, I thank my 

15 stars, in the pillory ; nor if I read them aright, is it 

within the compass of my destiny that I ever should be. 

When therefore I say that I have no ear, you will 

understand me to mean — foi' music. To say that this 

heart never melted at the concord of sweet sounds 

20 would be a foul self -libel. Water parted from the sea 
never fails to move it strangely. So does In Infancy. 
But they were used to be sung at her harpsichord (the 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 55 

old-fashioned instrument in vogue in those days) by a 
gentlewoman — the gentlest, sure, that ever merited the 
appellation — the sweetest — why should I hesitate to 

name Mrs. S , once the blooming Fanny Weatheral 

of the Temple — who had power to thrill the soul of 5 
Elia, small imp as he was, even in his long coats ; and 
to make him glow, tremble, and blush with a passion 
that not faintly indicated the dayspring of that absorb- 
ing sentiment which was afterwards destined to over- 
whelm and subdue his nature quite for Alice W n. 10 

I even think that sentimentally, I am disposed to har- 
mony. But organically I am incapable of a tune. I 
have been practising God save the King all my life, 
whistling and humming of it over to myself in solitary 
corners ; and am not yet arrived, they tell me, within 15 
many quavers of it. Yet hath the loyalty of Elia never 
been impeached. 

I am not without suspicion that I have an undevel- 
oped faculty of music within me, Tor thrumming, in 
my wild way, on my friend A.'s piano, the other morn- 20 
ing, while he was engaged, in an adjoining parlor, — on 
his return he was pleased to say, " he thought it could 
not he the maid ! " On his first surprise at hearing the 
keys touched in somewhat an airy and masterful way, 
not dreaming of me, his suspicions had lighted on Jenny. 25 
But a grace, snatched from a superior refinement, soon 
convinced him that some being — technically perhaps 
deficient, but higher informed from a principle common 
to all the fine arts — had swayed the keys to a mood 



5Q CHARLES LAMB. 

whicli Jenny, with all her (less cultivated) enthusiasm, 
could never have elicited from them. I mentioned this 
as a proof of my friend's penetration, and not with any 
view of disparaging Jenny. 

5 Scientifically I could never be made to understand 
(yet have I taken some pains) what a note in music is ; 
or how one note should differ from another. Much less 
in voices can I distinguish a soprano from a tenor. Only 
sometimes the thorough-bass I contrive to guess at from 

10 its being supereminently harsh and disagreeable. I 
tremble, however, for my misapplication of the simplest 
terms of that whicli I disclaim. While I profess my 
ignorance, I scarce know what to say I am ignorant of. 
I hate, perhaps, by misnomers. Sostenuto and adagio 

15 stand in the like relation of obscurity to me ; and Sol, 
Fa, Mi, Be, is as conjuring as Ba.raliptou. 

It is hard to stand alone in an age like this (consti- 
tuted to the quick and critical perception of all harmoni- 
ous combinations, I verily believe, beyond all preceding 

20 ages, since Jubal stumbled upon the gamut), to remain, 
as it were, singly unimpressible to the magic influences 
of an art which is said to have such an especial stroke 
at soothing, elevating, and refining the passions. Yet, 
rather than break the candid current of my confessions, 

25 T must avow to you that I have received a great deal 
more pain than pleasure from this so cried-up faculty. 

I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. A car- 
penter's hammer, in a warm summer noon, will fret me 
into more than midsummer madness. But those uncon- 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 57 

nected, unset sounds are nothing to tlie measured malice 
of music. The ear is passive to those single strokes ; 
willingly enduring stripes while it hath no task to con. 
To music it cannot be passive. It will strive — mine at 
least will — 'spite of its inaptitude, to thrid the maze ; 5 
like an unskilled eye painfully poring upon hieroglyph- 
ics. I have sat through an Italian Opera till, for sheer 
pain and inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out into 
the noisiest places of the crowded streets to solace my- 
self with sounds, which I was not obliged to follow, and 10 
get rid of the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, 
barren attention ! I take refuge in the unpretending 
assemblance of honest, common-life sounds ; — and the 
purgatory of the Enraged Musician becomes my para- 
dise. 15 

I have sat at an Oratorio (that profanation of the 
purposes of the cheerful playhouse), watching the faces 
of the auditory in the pit (what a contrast to Hogarth's 
Laughing Audience ! ), immovable, or affecting some faint 
emotion — till (as some have said, that our occupations 20 
in the next world will be but a shadow of what delighted 
us in this) I have imagined myself in some cold Theatre 
in Hades, where some of the formis of the earthly one 
should be kept up, with none of the enjoyment, or like 

that — 25 

"Party in a parlor 
All silent, and all damned." 

Above all, those insufferable concertos and pieces of 
music, as they are called, do plague and imbitter my 



58 CHARLES LAMB. 

appreliension. Words are something, but to be exposed 
to an endless battery of mere sounds ; to be long a-dying ; 
to lie stretched upon a rack of roses ; to keep up languor 
by unintermitted effort ; to pile honey upon sugar, and 

5 sugar upon honey to an interminable, tedious sweetness ; 
to fill up sound with feeling, and strain ideas to keep 
pace with it ; to gaze on empty frames, and be forced to 
make the pictures for yourself ; to read a book all stops, 
and be obliged to supply the verbal matter ; to invent 

10 extempore tragedies to answer to the vague gestures of 
an inexplicable rambling mime, — these- are faint shadows 
of what I have undergone from a series of the ablest 
executed pieces of this empty iiistimmental music. 

I deny not, that in the opening of a concert I have 

15 experienced something vastly lulling and agreeable ; — 
afterwards followeth the languor and the oppression. 
Like that disappointing book in Patmos, or like the com- 
ing on of melancholy described by Burton, doth music 
make her first insinuating approaches : " Most pleasant 

20 it is to such as are melancholy given to walk alone in 
some solitary grove betwixt wood and water by some 
brook side, and to meditate upon some delightsome and 
pleasant subject which shall affect him most, amabilis 
insania and mentis gratissimus error. A most incom- 

25 parable delight to build castles in the air, to go smiling 
to themselves, acting an infinite variety of parts which 
they suppose and strongly imagine they act, or that they 
see done. So delightsome these toys at first, they could 
spend whole days and nights without sleep, even whole 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 59 

years in such contemplations and fantastical meditations, 
which, are like so many dreams, and will hardly be drawn 
from them, — winding and unwinding themselves as so 
many clocks, and still pleasing their humors, until at 
last the SCENE TURisrs upon a sudden, and they being 5 
now habituated to such meditations and solitary places, 
can endure no company, can think of nothing but harsh 
and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow, suspicion, suh- 
ricsticus pudor, discontent, cares, and weariness of life, 
surprise them on a sudden, and they can think of nothing 10 
else ; continually suspecting, no sooner are their eyes 
open, but this infernal plague of melancholy seizeth on. 
them, and terrifies their souls, representing some dismal 
object to their minds ; which now, by no means, no labor, 
no persuasions, they can avoid, they cannot be rid of, 15 
they cannot resist." 

Something like this ^' scene turning " I have experi- 
enced at the evening parties at the house of my good 

Catholic friend Nov ; who, by the aid of a capital 

organ, himself the most finished of players, converts his 20 
drawing-room into a chapel, his weekdays into Sundays, 
and these latter into minor heavens.^ 

When my friend commences upon one of those solemn 
anthems, which peradventure struck upon my heedless 
ear, rambling in the side aisles of the dim Abbey, some 25 
five-and-thirty years since, waking a new sense, and put- 
ting a soul of old religion into my young apprehension 

1 I have been there, and still would go ; 
'Tis like a little heaven below. — Db. Watts. 



60 CHARLES LAMB. 

(whether it be that, in which the Psalmist, weary of the 
persecutions of bad men, wisheth to himself clove's 
wings, or that other, which, with a like measure of sobri- 
ety and pathos, inquireth by what means the young man 
5 shall best cleanse his mind), a holy calm pervadeth me. 

I am for the time — 

" rapt above earth. 
And possess joys not promised at my birth." 

But when this master of the spell, not content to have 

10 laid his soul prostrate, goes on in his power to inflict 
more bliss than lies in her capacity to receive, — im- 
patient to overcome her " earthly " with his " heavenly," 
— still pouring in for protracted hours fresh waves and 
fresh from the sea of sound, or from that inexhausted 

15 German ocean, above which, in triumphant progress, dol- 
phin-seated, ride those Arions, Haydn and Mozart, with 
their attendant Tritons, Bach, Beethoven, and a countless 
tribe, whom to attempt to reckon up would but plunge 
me again in the deeps, — I stagger under the weight of 

20 harmony, reeling to and fro at my wits' end ; — clouds, as 
of frankincense, oppress me — priests, altars, censers 
dazzle before me — the genius of his religion hath me 
in her toils — a shadowy, triple tiara invests the brow of 
my friend, late so naked, so ingenuous — he is Pope, and 

25 by him sits, like as in the anomaly of dreams, a she-Pope, 
too, — tri-coroneted like himself! I am converted, and 
yet a Protestant ; — at once malleus hereticorum, and 
myself grand heresiarch ; or three heresies centre in my 
person; — I am Marcion, Ebion, and Cerinthus — Gog 



ESSAYS OF ELI A. 61 

and Magog — what not? — till the coming in of the 
friendly supper-tray dissipates the figment, and a draught 
of true Luther beer (in which chiefly my friend shows 
himself no bigot) at once reconciles me to the rationali- 
ties of a purer faith, and restores to me the genuine un- 
terrifying aspects of my pleasant-countenanced host and 
hostess. 



62 CHARLES LAMB. 



A QUAKEES' MEETING. 



stillborn Silence ! thou that art 

Floodgate of the deeper lieart ! 

Offspring of a heavenly kind ! 

Frost o' the mouth, and thaw o' the mind! 
5 Secrecy's confidant, and he 

"Who makes religion mystery ! 

Admiration's speaking'st tongue ! 

Leave thy desert shades among 

Reverend hermits' hallow'd cells, 
10 Where retired devotion dwells ! 

"With thy enthusiasms come, 

Seize our tongues, and strike us dumb!^ 

Reader, would' st thou "know what true peace and 
quiet mean ; would'st thou find a refuge from the noises 

15 and clamors of the multitude ; would'st thou enjoy at 
once solitude and society ; would'st thou possess the 
depth of thine own spirit in stillness, without being shut 
out from the consolatory faceS of thy species ; would'st 
thou be alone, and yet accompanied ; solitary, yet not 

*J0 desolate ; singular, yet not without some to keep thee in 
countenance ; a unit in aggregate ; a simple in composite, 
— come with me into a Quakers' Meeting. 

Dost thou love silence deep as that " before the winds 

» From Poems of all Sorts by Richard Fleckno, 1653. 



:essays of elia. 63 

were made^''? Go not out into the wilderness ; descend 
not into the profundities of the earth ; shut not up thy 
casements ; nor pour wax into the little cells of thy ears, 
with little-faith'd self-mistrusting Ulysses. Eetire with 
me into a Quakers' Meeting. 5 

For a man to refrain even from good words, and to 
hold his peace, it is commendable ; but for a multitude 
it is great mastery. 

What is the stillness of the desert compared with this 
place ? what the uncommunicating muteness of fishes ? 10 
— here the goddess reigns and revels. "Boreas, and 
Cesias, and Argestes loud," do not with their inter-con- 
founding uproars more augment the brawl — nor the 
waves of the blown Baltic with their clubbed sounds — 
than their opposite (Silence her sacred self) is multi- 15 
plied, and. rendered more intense by numbers, and by 
sympathy. She too hath her deeps, that call unto deeps. 
Negation itself hath a positive more and less ; and closed 
eyes would seem to obscure the great obscurity of mid- 
night. 20 

There are wounds which an imperfect solitude cannot 
heaL By imperfect I mean that which a man enjoyeth 
by himself. The perfect is that which he can sometimes 
attain in crowds, but nowhere so absolutely as in a Qua- 
kers' Meeting. Those first hermits did certainly under 25 
stand this principle, when they retired into Egyptian 
solitudes, not singly, but in shoals, to enjoy one another's 
want of conversation. The Carthusian is bound to his 
brethren by this agreeing spirit of incommunicativeness. 



64 CHABLES LAMB. 

In secular occasions, what so pleasant as to be reading a 
book through a long winter evening, with a friend sitting 
by — say, a wife — he or she too (if that be probable), 
reading another, without interruption or oral communi- 

5 cation ? Can there be no sympathy without the gabble 
of words ? Away with this inhuman, shy, single, shade- 
and-cavern-haunting solitariness. Give me, Master Zim- 
mermann, a sympathetic solitude. 

To pace alone in the cloister, or side-aisles of some 

10 cathedral, time-stricken ; 

"Or under hanging mountains, 
Or "by the fall of fountains;" 

is but a vulgar luxury compared with that which those 
enjoy who come together for the purposes of more com- 

15 plete, abstracted solitude. This is the loneliness "to be 
felt." The Abbey Church of Westminster hath nothing 
so solemn, so spirit-soothing, as the naked walls and 
benches of a Quakers' Meeting. Here are no tombs, no 
inscriptions, — 

20 " Sands, ignohle things, 

Dropt from the ruined sides of kings;" 

but here is something which throws Antiquity herself 
into the foreground — Silence — eldest of things — lan- 
guage of old Night — primitive Discourser — to which 
25 the insolent decays of mouldering grandeur have but 
arrived by a violent, and as we may say, unnatural pro- 
gression. 



ESSAYS OF ELI A. 65 

"How reverend is the view of these hushed heads, 
Looking tranquillity!" 

Nothing-plotting, nonght-caballing, unmiscliievous syn- 
od ! convocation without intrigue ! parliament without 
debate ! what a lesson dost thou read to council, and to 5 
consistory! — if my pen treat of you lightly — as haply 
it will wander — yet my spirit hath gravely felt the wis- 
dom of your custom, when sitting among you in deepest 
peace, which some out-welling tears would rather con- 
firm than disturb, I have reverted to t4ie times of your 10 
beginnings, and the sowings of the seed by Pox and 
Dewesbury. I have witnessed that which brought be- 
fore my eyes your heroic tranquillity, inflexible to the 
rude jests and serious violences of the insolent soldiery, 
republican or royalist, sent to molest you, — for ye sate 15 
betwixt the fires of two persecutions, the outcast and 
off-scouring of church and presbytery. I have seen the 
reeling sea-rufhan, who had wandered into your recep- 
tacle with the avowed intention of disturbing your quiet, 
from the very spirit of the place receive in a moment a 20 
new heart, and presently sit among ye as a lamb amidst 
lambs. And I remember Penn before his accusers, and 
Fox in the bail-dock, where he was lifted up in spirit, as 
he tells us, and " the judge and the jury became as dead 
men under his feet." 25 

Eeader, if you are not acquainted with it, I would 
recommend to you above all church-narratives, to read 
Sewel's History of the Quakers. It is in folio, and is the • 



6Q CHARLES LAMB, 

abstract of the Journals of Fox and the primitive Friends. 
It is far more edifying and affecting than anything yon 
will read of Wesley and his colleagues. Here is nothing 
to stagger you, nothing to make you mistrust, no suspi- 

5 cion of alloy, no drop or dreg of the worldly or ambitious 

. spirit. You will here read the true story of that much- 
injured, ridiculed man (who perhaps hath been a byword 
in your mouth), — James Naylor : what dreadful suffer- 
ings, with what patience he endured, even to the boring 

10 through of his tongue with redhot irons, without a mur- 
mur 5 and with what strength of mind, when the delu- 
sion he had fallen into, which they stigmatized for 
blasphemy, had given way to clearer thoughts, he could 
renounce his error, in a strain of the beautifulest hu- 

15 mility, yet keep his first grounds, and be a Quaker still ! 
— so different from the practice of your common con- 
verts from enthusiasm, who when they apostatize, apos- 
tatize all, and think they can never get far enough from 
the society of their former errors, even to the renuncia- 

20 tion of some saving truth, with which they had been 
mingled, not implicated. 

Get the Writings of John Woolman by heart ; and 
love the early Quakers. 

How far the followers of these good men in our days 

25 have kept to the primitive spirit, or in what propor- 
tion they have substituted formxality for it, the Judge 
of Spirits can alone determine. I have seen faces in 
their assemblies, upon which the dove sat visibly brood- 
ing. Others, again, I have watched, when my thoughts 



ESSAYS OF ELI A. 67 

should have been better engaged, in which I could pos- 
sibly detect nothing but a blank inanity. But quiet was 
in all, and the disposition to unanimity, and the absence 
of the fierce controvers.ial workings. If the spiritual 
pretensions of the Quakers have abated, at least they 5 
m£ike few pretences. Hypocrites they certainly are not, 
in their preaching. It is seldom, indeed, that you shall 
see one get up amongst them to hold forth. Only now 
and then a trembling, female, generally aficient voice is 
heard — you cannot guess from what part of the meet- 10 
ing it proceeds — with a low, buzzing, musical sound, 
laying out a few words which '^ she thought might suit 
the condition of some present," with a quaking diffidence 
which leaves no possibility of supposing that anything 
of female vanity was mixed up, where the tones were so 15 
full of tenderness and a restraining modesty. The men, 
for what I have observed, speak seldomer. 

Once only, and it was some years ago, I witnessed a 
sample of the old Foxian orgasm. It was a man of 
giant stature, who, as Wordsworth phrases it, might have 20 
danced "from head to foot equipt in iron mail." His 
frame was of iron too. But he was malleable. I saw 
him shake all over with the spirit — I dare not say of 
delusion. The strivings of the outer man were unutter- 
able — he seemed not to speak, but to be spoken from. 25 
I saw the strong man bowed down, and his knees to fail 
— his joints all seemed loosening — it was a figure to 
set off against Paul Preaching — the words he uttered 
were few and sound — he was evidently resisting his 



68 CHARLES LAMB. 

will — keeping down his own word-wisdom with, more 
mighty effort than the world's orators strain for theirs. 
"He had been a wit in his youth," he told us, with ex- 
pressions of a sober remorse. And it was not till long 

5 after the impression had begun to wear away, that I was 
enabled with something like a smile, to recall the striking 
incongruity of the confession — understanding the term 
in its worldly acceptation — with the frame and physi- 
ognomy of the person before me. His brow would have 

10 scared aw^ay the Levites — the Jocos Risus-que — faster 
than the Loves fled the face of Dis at Enna. By wit, 
even in his youth, I will be sworn, he understood some- 
thing far within the limits of an allowable liberty. 

More frequently the Meeting is broken up without a 

15 word having been spoken. But the mind has been fed. 
You go away with a sermon not made with hands. You 
have been in the mildei* caverns of Trophonius ; or 
as in some den, where that fiercest and savagest of all 
wild creatures, the Tongue, that unruly member, has 

20 strangely lain tied up and captive. You have bathed 
with stillness. when the spirit is sore fretted, even 
tired to sickness of the j anglings and nonsense-noises of 
the world, what a balm and a solace it is to go and seat 
yourself, for a quiet half-hour, upon some undisputed 

25 corner of a bench, among the gentle Quakers ! 

Their garb and stillness conjoined, present a uniform- 
ity, tranquil and herd-like — as in the pasture — " forty 
feeding like one." 

The very garments of a Quaker seem incapable of 



ESSAYS OF ELIA, 69 

receiving a soil, and cleanliness in them to be some- 
thing more than the absence of its contrary. Every 
Quakeress is a lily ; and when they come up in bands to 
their Whitsun-conferences, whitening the easterly streets 
of the Metropolis, from all parts of the United King- 
dom, they show like troops of the Shining Ones. 



70 CHARLES LAMB. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 



I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sympa- 

thizeth with all things ; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy 

in anything. Those natural repugnancies do not touch me, nor do I 

behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch. — 

5 Religlo Medici. 

That the author of the Rellgio Medici, mounted upon 
the airy stilts of abstraction, conversant about notional 
and conjectural essences, in whose categories of Being 
the possible took the upper hand of the actual, should 

10 have overlooked the impertinent individualities of such 
poor concretions as mankind, is not much to be admired. 
It is rather to be wondered at, that in the genus of 
animals he should have condescended to distinguish 
that species at all. For myself — earthbound and fet- 

15 tered to the scene of my activities, — 

"Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky." 

I confess that I do feel the differences of mankind, 
national or individual, to an unhealthy excess. I can 
look with no indiiferent eye upon things or persons. 
20 Whatever is, is to me a matter of taste or distaste ; or 
when once it becomes indifferent, it begins to be dis- 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 71 

relishing. I am, in plainer words, a bundle of pre- 
judices — made up of likings and dislikings — the 
veriest thrall to sympathies, apathies, and antipathies. 
In a certain sense, I hope it may be said of me that I 
am a lover of my species. I can feel for all indiffer- 5 
ently, but I cannot feel towards all equally. The more 
purely English word that expresses sympathy will bet- 
ter explain my meaning. I can be a friend to a worthy 
man, who upon another account cannot be my mate or 
felloiv. I cannot like all people alike.^ 10 

I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and 
am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. 
They cannot like me, and, in truth, I never knew one of 

1 I would, be understood as confining myself to the subject of imperfect 
sympathies. To nations or classes of men there can be no direct antipathy. 
There may be individuals born and constellated so opposite to another in- 
dividual nature, that the same sphere cannot hold them. I have met with 
my moral antipodes, and can believe the story of two persons meeting (who 
never saw one another before in their lives) and instantly fighting. 

" We by proof find there should be 
'Twixt man and man, such an antipathy, 
That though he can show no just reason why 
For any former wrong or injury, 
Can neither find a blemish in his fame, 
Nor aught in face or feature justly blame, 
Can challenge or accuse him of no evil, 
Yet notwithstanding, hates hun as a devil." 

The lines are from old Heywood's Hierarchie of Angels, and he subjoins a 
curious story in confirmation of a Spaniai'd, who attempted to assassinate 
a King Ferdinand of Spain, and being put to the rack could give no other 
reason for the deed but an inveterate antipatliy which he had taken to the 
first sight of the King. 

" The cause which to that act compell'd him 
Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him." 



72 CHABLES LAMB, 

that nation who attempted to do it. There is something 
more plain and ingenuous in their mode of proceeding. 
We know one another at first sight. There is an order 
of imperfect intellects (under which mine must be con- 

5 tent to rank) which in its constitution is essentially anti- 
Caledonian. The owners of the sort of faculties I allude 
to have minds rather suggestive than comprehensive. 
They have no pretences to much clearness or precision 
in their ideas, or in their manner of expressing them. 

10 Their intellectual wardrobe (to confess fairly) has few 
whole pieces in it. They are content with fragments 
and scattered pieces of Truth. She presents no full 
front to thenij a feature or sideface at the most. Hints 
and glimpses, germs and crude essays at a system, is the 

15 utmost they pretend to. They beat up a little game, per- 
adventure, and leave it to knottier heads, more robust 
constitutions, to run it down. The light that lights 
them is not steady and polar, but mutable and shifting ; 
waxing, and again waning. Their conversation is ac- 

20 cordingly. They will throw out a random word in or 
out of season, and be content to let it pass for what it is 
worth. They cannot speak always as if they were upon 
their oath, but must be understood, speaking or writing, 
with some abatement. They seldom wait to mature a 

25 proposition, but e'en bring it to market in the green 
ear. They delight to impart their defective discoveries 
as they arise, without waiting for their full development. 
They are no systematizers, and would but err more by 
attempting it. Their minds, as I said before, are sug- 



:essats of ELI a, 73 

gestive merely. The brain of a true Caledonian (if I 
'am not mistaken) is constituted upon quite a different 
plan. His Minerva is born in panoply. You are never 
admitted to see his ideas in their growth, if, indeed, they 
do grow, and are not rather put together upon principles 5 
of clock-work. You never catch his mind in an undress. 
He never hints or suggests anything, but unlades his 
stock of ideas in perfect order and completeness. He 
brings his total wealth into company, and gravely un- 
packs it. His riches are always about him. He never lo 
stoops to catch a glittering something in your presence 
to share it with you, before he quite knows whether 
it be true touch or not. You cannot cry halves to any- 
thing that he finds. He does not find, but bring. You 
never witness his first apprehension of a thing. His un- 15 
derstanding is always at its meridian ; you never see the 
first dawn, the early streaks. He has no falterings 
of self-suspicion. Surmises, guesses, misgivings, half- 
intuitions, semi-consciousnesses, partial illuminations, 
dim instincts, embryo conceptions, have no place in his 20 
brain or vocabulary. The twilight of dubiety never 
falls upon him. Is he orthodox, he has no doubts. Is 
he an infidel, he has none either. Between the affirma- 
tive and the negative there is no border-land with him. 
You cannot hover with him upon the confines of truth, 25 
or wander in the maze of a probable argument. He 
always keeps the path. You cannot make excursions 
with him, for he sets you right. His taste never fluctu- 
ates. His morality never abates. He cannot compro- 



74 CHARLES LAMB, 

mise, or understand middle actions. There can be but 
a right and a wrong. His conversation is as a book. 
His affirmations have the sanctit}^ of an oath. You 
must speak upon the square with him. He stops a 

5 metaphor like a suspected person in an enemy's country. 
" A healthy book ! " said one of his countrymen to me, 
who had ventured to give that appellation to John 
Buncle, " did I catch rightly what you said ? I have 
heard of a man in health, and of a healthy state of body, 

10 but I do not see how that epithet can be properly 
applied to a book." Above all, you must beware of in- 
indirect expressions before a Caledonian. Clap an ex- 
tinguisher upon your irony, if you are unhappily blest 
with a vein of it. Eemember you are upon your oath. 

15 I have a print of a graceful female after Leonardo da 

Vinci, which I was showing oif to Mr. . After he 

had examined it minutely, I ventured to ask him how 
he liked my beauty (a foolish name it goes by among 
my friends), when he very gravely assured me, that " he 

20 had considerable respect for my character and talents " 
(so he was pleased to say), " but he had not given him- 
self much thought about the degree of my personal pre- 
tensions." The misconception staggered me, but did not 
seem much to disconcert him. Persons of this nation 

25 are particularly fond of affirming a truth, which nobody 
doubts. They do not so properly affirm as annunciate 
it. They do indeed appear to have such a love of truth 
(as if like virtue it were valuable for itself), that ail 
truth becomes equally valuable, whether the proposition 



ESJSAYS OF ELI A. 75 

that contains it be new or old, disputed, or such as is 
impossible to become a subject of disputation. I was 
present not long since at a party of North Britons, 
where a son of Burns was expected, and happened to 
drop a silly expression (in my south British way), that 5 
I Avished it were the father instead of the son, when 
four of them started up at once to inform me, that '^ that 
was impossible, because he was dead." An impracti- 
cable wish, it seems, was more than they could conceive. 
Swift has hit off this part of their character; namely, 10 
their love of truth, in his biting way, but with an il- 
liberality that necessarily confines the passage to the 
margin.^ The tediousness of these people is certainly 
provoking. I wonder if they ever tire one another ? 
In my early life I had a passionate fondness for the 15 
poetry of Burns. I have sometimes foolishly hoped to 
ingratiate myself with his countrymen by expressing it. 
But I have always found that a true Scot resents your 
admiration of his compatriot, even more than he would 
your contempt of him. The latter he imputes to your 20 
"imperfect acquaintance v/ith many of the words which 
he uses ; " and the same objection makes it a presump- 

1 There are some people wlio think they sufficiently acquit themselves, 
and entertain their company, with relating facts of no consequence, not at 
all out of the road of such common incidents as happen every day ; and 
this I have observed more frequently among the Scots than any other 
nation, wlio are very careful not to omit the minutest circumstances of 
time or place ; which kind of discourse, if it were not a little relieved by 
the uncouth terms and phrases, as well as accent and gesture peculiar to 
that country, would he hardly tolerable. — Hints towards an essay on C6n~ 
versation. 



76 CHABLES LAMB. 

tion in you to suppose that you can admire him. Thom- 
son they seem to have forgotten. Smollett they have 
neither forgotten nor forgiven, for his delineation of 
Rory and his companion, upon their first introduction to 

5 our metropolis. Speak of Smollett as a great genius, 
and they will retort upon you Hume's History com- 
pared with his Continuation of it. What if the his- 
torian had continued Humphrey Clinker ? 

I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for Jews. They 

10 are a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared with which 
Stonehenge is in its nonage. They date beyond the 
pyramids. But I should not care to be in habits of 
familiar intercourse with any of that nation. I confess 
that I have not the nerves to enter their synagogues. 

15 Old prejudices cling about me. T cannot shake off the 
story of Hugh of Lincoln. Centuries of injury, con- 
tempt, and hate, on the one side, — of cloaked revenge, 
dissimulation, and hate, on the other, — between our and 
their fathers, must and ought to affect the blood of the 

20 children. T cannot believe it can run clear and kindly 
yet ; or that a few fine words, such as candor, liberality, 
the light of a nineteenth century, can close up the 
breaches of so deadly a disunion. A Hebrew is nowhere 
congenial to me. He is least distasteful on 'Change — 

25 for the mercantile spirit levels all distinctions, as all are 
beauties in the dark. I boldly confess that T do not 
relish the approximation of Jew and Christian, which 
has become so fashionable. The reciprocal endearments 
have, to me, something hypocritical and unnatural in 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 77 

them. I do not like to see the Church and Synagogue 
kissing and congeeing in awkward postures of an affected 
civility. If theij are converted, why do they not come 
over to us altogether ? Why keep up a form of separa- 
tion, when the life of it is fled ? If they can sit with 5 
us at table, why do they keck" at our cookery ? I do 
not understand these half-convertites. Jews christian- 
izing—Christians judaizing — puzzle me. I like fish 
or flesh. A moderate Jew is a more confounding piece 
of anomaly than a wet Quaker. The spirit of the syna- 10 

gogue is essentially separative. B would have been 

more in keeping if he had abided by the faith of his 
forefathers. There is a fine scorn in his face which 

nature meant to be of Christians. The Hebrew 

spirit is strong in him, in spite of his proselytism. He 15 
cannot conquer the Shibboleth. How it breaks out 
when he sings, •• The Children of Israel passed through 
the Eed Sea ! " The auditors, for the moment, are as 
Egyptians to him, and he rides over our necks in tri- 
umph. There is no mistaking him. B has a strong 20 

expression of sense in his countenance, and it is con- 
firmed by his singing. The foundation of his vocal 
excellence. He sings with understanding, as Kemble 
delivered dialogue. He would sing the Commandments, 
and give an appropriate character to each prohibition. 2i5 
His nation, in general, have not over-sensible counte- 
nances. How should they? — but you seldom see a 
silly expression among them. Gain, and the pursuit of 
gain, sharpen a man's visage. I never heard of an idiot 



78 CHABLES LAMB. 

being born among them. Some admire the Jewish 
female physiognomy. T admire it — but with trembling. 
Jael had those full, dark, inscrutable eyes. 

In the Negro countenance you will often meet with 

5 strong traits of benignity. T have felt yearnings of 
tenderness towards some of these faces — or rather 
masks — that have looked out kindly upon one in casual 
encounters in the streets and highways. I love what 
Euller beautifully calls — these " images of God cut in 

10 ebony." But I should not like to associate with them, 
to share my meals and my good nights with them — 
because they are black. 

I love Quaker ways and Quaker worship. I venerate 
the Quaker principles. It does me good for the rest of 

15 the day when I meet any of their people in my path. 
When I am ruffled or disturbed by any occurrence, the 
sight or quiet voice of a Quaker acts upon me as a ven- 
tilator, lightening the air, and taking off a load from the 
bosom. But I cannot like the Quakers (as Desdemona 

20 would say) ''to live with them." I am all over sophis- 
ticated — with humors, fancies, craving hourly sym- 
pathy. I must have books, pictures, theatres, chitchat, 
scandal, jokes, ambiguities, and a thousand whimwhams, 
which their simpler taste can do without. I should starve 

25 at their primitive banquet. My appetites are too high 
for the salads which (according to Evelyn) Eve dressed 
for the angel, my gusto too excited — 

"To sit a guest witla Daniel at his pulse." 



ESSAYS OF ELI A. 79 

The indirect answers which Quakers are often found 
to return to a question put to them may be explained, I 
think, without the vulgar assumption that they are more 
given to evasion and equivocation than other people. 
They naturally look to their words more carefully, and 5 
are more cautious of committing themselves. They have 
a peculiar character to keep up on this head. They stand 
in a manner upon their veracity. A Quaker is by law 
exempted from taking an oath. The custom of resorting 
to an oath in extreme cases, sanctified as it is by all re- 10 
ligious antiquity, is apt (it must be confessed) to intro- 
duce into the laxer sort of minds the notion of two kinds 
of truth, — the one applicable to the solemn affairs of 
justice, and the other to the common proceedings of daily 
intercourse. As truth bound upon the conscience by an 15 
oath can be but truth, so in the common affirmations of 
the shop and the market-place a latitude is expected and 
conceded upon questions wanting this solemn covenant. 
Something less than truth satisfies. It is common to 
hear a person say, '' You do not expect me to speak as if 20 
I were upon my oath." Hence a great deal of incorrect- 
ness and inadvertency, short of falsehood, creeps into 
ordinary conversation ; and a kind of secondary or laic- 
truth is tolerated, where clergy-truth — oath-truth, by 
the nature of the circumstances, is not required. A 25 
Quaker knows none of this distinction. His simple af- 
firmation being received, upon the most sacred occasions, 
without any further test, stamps a value upon the words 
which he is to use upon the most indifferent topics of 



80 CHARLES LAMB. 

life. He looks to them, naturally, with more severity. 
You can have of him no more than his word. He knows, 
if he is caught tripping in a casual expression, he forfeits 
for himself at least, his claim to the invidious exemp- 

5 tion. He knows that his syllables are weighed ; and 
how far a consciousness of this particular watchfulness, 
exerted against a person, has a tendency to produce in- 
direct answers, and a diverting of the question by honest 
means, might be illustrated, and the practice justified, 

10 by a more sacred example than is proper to be adduced 
upon this occasion. The admirable presence of mind, 
which is notorious in Quakers upon all contingencies, 
might be traced to this imposed self-watchfulness, if it 
did not seem rather an humble and secular scion of that 

15 old stock of religious constancy, which never bent or 
faltered, in the Primitive Friends, or gave way to the 
winds of persecution, to the violence of judge or accuser, 
under trials and racking examinations. " You will never 
be the wiser, if I sit here answering your questions till 

20 midnight," said one of those upright Justicers to Penn, 
who had been putting law-cases with a puzzling subtlety. 
" Thereafter as the answers may be," retorted the Quaker. 
The astonishing composure of this people is sometimes 
ludicrously displayed in lighter instances. I was travel- 

25 ling in a stage-coach with three male Quakers, buttoned 
up in the straitest non-conformity of their sect. We 
stopped to bait at Andover, where a meal, partly tea ap- 
paratus, partly supper, was set before us. My friends 
confined themselves to the tea-table. I, in my way, took 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 81 

supper. When the landlady brought in the bill, the 
eldest of my companions discovered that she had charged 
for both meals. This was resisted. Mine hostess was 
very clamorous and positive. Some mild arguments 
were used on the part of the Quakers, for which the 5 
heated mind of the good lady seemed by no means a fit 
recipient. The guard came in with his usual peremptory 
notice. The Quakers pulled out their money and for- 
mally tendered it — so much for tea, — I, in humble 
imitation, tendering mine — for the supper which I had 10 
taken. She would not relax in her demand. So they 
all three quietly put up their silver, as did myself, and 
marched out of the room, the eldest and gravest going 
first, with myself closing up the rear, who thought I could 
not do better than follow the example of such grave and 15 
warrantable personages. We got in. The steps went up. 
The coach drove off. The murmurs of mine hostess, not 
very indistinctly or ambiguously pronounced, became 
after a time inaudible, — and now my conscience, which 
the whimsical scene had for a while suspended, begin- 20 
ning to give some twitches, I waited, in the hope that 
some justification would be offered by these serious per- 
sons for the seeming injustice of their conduct. To my 
great surprise, not a syllable was dropped on the subject. 
They sat as mute as at a meeting. At length the eldest 25 
of them broke silence, by inquiring of his next neighbor, 
" Hast thee heard how indigoes go at the India House ? " 
— and the question operated as a soporific on my moral 
feeling as far as Exeter. 



82 CHARLES LAMB. 



MY RELATIONS. 



I AM arrived at that point of life at which, a man may 
account it a blessing, as it is a singularity, if he have 
either of his parents surviving. I have not that felicity 
— and sometimes think feelingly of a passage in Browne's 

5 Christian Morals, where he speaks of a man that hath 
lived sixty or seventy years in the world. " In such a 
compass of time," he says, " a man may have a close 
apprehension what it is to be forgotten, when he hath 
lived to find none who could remember his father, or 

10 scarcely the friendr of his youth, and may sensibly see 
with what a face, in no long time, Oblivion will look 
upon himself." 

I had an aunt, a dear and good one. She was one 
whom single blessedness had soured to the world. She 

15 often used to say that I was the only thing in it which 
she loved ; and when she thought I was quitting it, she 
grieved over me wdth mother's tears. A partiality quite 
so exclusive my reason cannot altogether approve. She 
was from morning till night poring over good books and 

20 devotional exercises. Her favorite volumes were, Thomas 
a Kempis, in Stanhope's translation ; and a E-oman 
Catholic Frayer-Book with the Tnatins and complines reg- 



ESSAYS OF ELI A. 83 

ularly set down — terms which I was at that time too 
young to understand. She persisted in reading them, 
although admonished daily concerning their Papistical 
tendency ; and went to church every Sabbath as a good 
Protestant should do. These were the only books she 5 
studied, although, I think, at one period of her life, she 
told me she had read with great satisfaction the Adven- 
tures of an XJnfortunate Yoiing Nobleman. Finding the 
door of the chapel in Essex Street open one day, — it was 
in the infancy of that heresy, — she went in, liked the 10 
sermon and the manner of worship, and frequented it at 
intervals for some time after. She came not for doc- 
trinal points, and never missed them. With some little 
asperities in her constitution, which I have above hinted 
at, she was a steadfast, friendly being, and a fine old Chris- 15 
tian. She was a woman of strong sense and a shrewd 
mind — extraordinary at a repartee ; one of the few 
occasions of her breaking silence — else she did not much 
value wit. The only secular employment I remember 
to have seen her engaged in was the splitting of French 20 
beans, and dropping them into a china basin of fair water. 
The odor of those tender vegetables to this day comes 
back upon my sense, redolent of soothing recollections. 
Certainly it is the most delicate of culinary operations. 

Male aunts, as somebody calls them, I had none — to 25 
remember. By the uncle's side I may be said to have 
been born an orphan. Brother or sister I never had 
any — to know them. A sister, I thiuk, that should have 
been Elizabeth, died in both our infancies. What a 



84 CHARLES LAMB. 

comfort, or what a care, may I not have missed in her ! 
But I have cousins sprinkled about in Hertfordshire, — 
besides two, with whom I have been all my life in 
habits of the closest intimacy, and whom I may term 

5 cousins par excellence. These are James and Bridget 
Elia. They are older than myself by twelve and ten 
years, and neither of them seems disposed, in matters 
of advice and guidance, to waive any of the prerogatives 
which primogeniture confers. May they continue still 

10 in the same mind ; and when they shall be seventy-live 
and seventy-three years old (I cannot spare them sooner), 
persist in treating me in my grand climacteric precisely 
as a stripling or younger brother ! 

James is an inexplicable cousin. Nature hath her 

15 unities which not every critic can penetrate ; or, if we 
feel, we cannot explain them. The pen of Yorick, and 
of none since his, could have drawn J. E. entire, — those 

• fine Shandean lights and shades which make up his story. 
I must limp after in my poor antithetical manner, as the 

20 fates have given me grace and talent. J. E. then — to 
the eye of a common observer at least — seemeth made 
up of contradictory principles. The genuine child of 
impulse, the frigid philosopher of prudence — the phlegm 
of my cousin's doctrine is invariably at war with his 

25 temperament, which is high sanguine. A¥ith always 
some fire-new project in his brain, J. E. is the systematic 
opponent of innovation, and crier-down of everything 
that has not stood the test of age and experiment. With 
a hundred fine notions chasing one another hourly in his 



ESSAYS OF ELI A. 85 

fancy, he is startled at the least approach to the romantic 
in others ; and determined by his own sense in every- 
thing, commends you to the guidance of common-sense 
on all occasions. With a touch of the eccentric in all 
which he does or says, he is only anxious that you should 5 
not commit yourself by doing anything absurd or singu- 
lar. On my once letting slip at table that I was not 
fond of a certain popular dish, he begged me at any rate 
not to say so — for the world would think me mad. He 
disguises a passionate fondness for works of high art 10 
(whereof he hath amassed a choice collection), under the 
pretext of buying only to sell again — that his enthu- 
siasm may give no encouragement to yours. Yet, if it 
were so, why does that piece of tender, pastoral Domen- 
ichino hang still by his wall? — is the ball of his eye 15 
much more dear to him ? — or what picture dealer can 
talk like him ? 

Whereas mankind in general are observed to warp 
their speculative conclusions to the bent of their indi- 
vidual humors, his theories are sure to be in diamet- 20 
rical opposition to his constitution. He is courageous 
as Charles of Sweden, upon instinct ; chary of his per- 
son upon principle, as a travelling Quaker. He has been 
preaching up to me, all my life, the doctrine of bowing 
to the great — the necessity of forms and manners to 25 
a man's getting on in the world. He himself never 
aims at either, that I can discover, — and has a spirit 
that would stand upright in the presence of the Cham 
of Tartary. It is pleasant to hear him discourse of 



86 CHARLES LAMB. 

patience, — extolling it as the truest wisdom, — and to 
see Mm during, the last seven minutes that his dinner is 
getting ready. Nature never ran up in her haste a more 
restless piece of workmanship than when she moulded 

5 this impetuous cousin, — and Art never turned out a 
more elaborate orator than he can display himself to be, 
upon this favorite topic of the advantages of quiet and 
contentedness in the state, whatever it be, that we are 
placed in. He is triumphant on this theme, when he 

10 has you safe in one of those short stages that ply for 
the western road, in a very obstructing manner at the 
foot of John Murray's street, — where you get in when 
it is empty, and are expected to wait till the vehicle 
hath completed her just freight, — a trying three-quar- 

15 ters of an hour to some people. He wonders at your 
fidgetiness, — '' where could we be better than we are, 
thus sitting, thus consulting ? " — " prefers, for his part, 
a state of rest to locomotion," — with an qnq all the 
while upon the coachman, — till at length, waxing out 

20 of all patience, at your luant of it, he breaks out into a 
pathetic remonstrance at the fellow for detaining us so 
long over the time which he had professed, and declares 
peremptorily, that '^ the gentl-eman in the coach is de- 
termined to get out, if he does not drive on that in- 

25 stant." 

Very quick at inventing an argument or detecting a 
sophistry, he is incapable of attending you in any chain 
of arguing. Indeed, he makes wild work with logic; 
and seems to jump at most admirable conclusions by 



ESSAYS OF ELI A. 8T 

some process not at all akin to it. Consonantly enough 
to this, he hath been heard to deny, upon certain oc- 
casions, that there exists such a faculty at all in man 
as reason; and wondereth how man came first to have 
a conceit of it, — enforcing his negation with all the 5 
might of reasoning he is master of. He has some spec- 
ulative notions against laughter, and will maintain that 
laughing is not natural to him, — w\\Qi\ perad venture 
the next moment his lungs shall crow like Chanticleer, 
He says some of the best things in the world — and de- 10 
clareth that wit is his aversion. It was he who said, 
upon seeing the Eton boys at play in their grounds, — 
What a pity to think that these fine, ingenuous lads in a 
few ijears ivUl all be changed into frivolous Members of 
Tarliament ! 

His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous, — and in 
age he discovereth no symptom of cooling. This is that 
which I admire in him. I hate people w^ho meet Time 
half-way. I am for no compromise with that inevitable 
spoiler. While he lives, J. E. will take his swing. It 20 
does me good, as I walk towards the street of my daily 
avocation on some fine May morning to meet him 
marching in a quite opposite direction, with a jolly, 
handsome presence, and shining, sanguine face that indi- 
cates some purchase in his eye, — a Claude — or a Hob- 25 

bima, for much of his enviable leisure is consumed at 

Christie's and Philips's — or where not, to pick up pic- 
tures and such gauds. On these occasions he mostly 
stoppeth me, to read a short lecture on the advantage a 



88 CHABLES LAMB. 

person like me possesses above himself, in having his 
time occupied with business which he must do, — as- 
sureth me that he often feels it hang heavy on his 
hands — wishes he had fewer holidays — and goes off 

5 — Westward Ho ! — chanting a tune, to Pall Mall, per- 
fectly convinced that he has convinced me, — while I 
proceed in my opposite direction, tuneless. 

It is pleasant again to see this Professor of Indiffer- 
ence doing the honors of his new purchase when he has 

10 fairly housed it. You must view it in every light, till 
he has found the best — placing it at this distance, and 
at that, but always suiting the focus of your sight to his 
own. You must spy at it through your fingers, to catch 
the aerial perspective, — though you assure him that to 

15 you the landscape shows much more agreeably without 
that artifice. Woe be to the luckless wight who does 
not only not respond to his rapture, but who should drop 
an unseasonable intimation of preferring one of his an- 
terior bargains to the present ! The last is always his 

20 best hit — his '' Cynthia of the minute." Alas! how 
many a mild Madonna have I known to come in — a 
Raphael ! — keep its ascendency for a few brief moons, 
them, after certain intermedial degradations, from the 
front drawing-room to the back gallery, thence to the 

25 dark parlor, — adopted in turn by each of the Carracci, 
under successive lowering ascriptions of filiation, mildly 
breaking its fall, consigned to the oblivious lumber-room, 
go out at last a Lucca Giordano, or plain Carlo Maratti ! 
— which things Avlien I beheld -^ musing upon the 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 89 

chances and mutabilities of fate below, bath mads me to 
reflect upon the altered condition of great personages, 
or that woful Queen of Richard the Second — 

" set forth in pomp, 
She came adorned hither like sweet May. 5 

Sent back like Hallowmas or shortest day." 

With great love for i/ou, J. E. hath but a limited sym- 
pathy with what you feel or do. He lives in a world 
of his own, and makes slender guesses at what passes 
in your mind. He never pierces the marrow of your lo 
habits. He will tell an old-established play-goer, that 
Mr. Such-a-one, of So-and-so (naming one of the thea- 
tres), is a very lively comedian — as a piece of news! 
He advertised me but the other day of some pleasant 
green lanes which he had found out for me, knoiolng vie 15 
to be a great lualker, in my own immediate vicinity — who 
have haunted the identical s^oot any time these twenty 
years ! He has not much respect for that class of feel- 
ings which goes by the name of sentimental. He applies 
the definition of real evil to bodily sufferings exclusively 20 
— and rejecteth all others as imaginary. He is affected 
by the sight, or the bare supposition, of a creature in 
pain, to a degree which I have never witnessed out of 
womankind. A constitutional acuteness to this class of 
suffering may in part account for this. The animar2;j 
tribe in particular he taketh under his especial protec- 
tion. A broken-winded or spur-galled horse is sure to 
find an advocate in him. An overloaded ass is his client 



90 CHARLES LAMB. 

forever. He is the apostle to the brute kind, the never- 
failing friend of those who have none to care for them. 
The contemplation of a lobster boiled, or eels skinned 
alive, will wring him so that " all for pity he could die.'^ 

5 It will take the savor from his palate, and the rest from 
his pillow for days and nights. With the intense feel- 
ing of Thomas Clarkson, he wanted only the steadiness 
of pursuit, and unity of purpose, of that " true yoke-fel- 
low with Time," to have effected as much for the A^ii- 

10 mal, as he hath done for the Negro Creation. But my 
uncontrollable cousin is but imperfectly formed for pur- 
poses which demand co-operation. He cannot Avait. His 
amelioration plans must be ripened in a day. For this 
reason he has cut but an equivocal figure in benevolent 

15 societies, and combinations for the alleviation of human 
sufferings. His zeal constantly makes him to outrun 
and put out his coadjutors. He thinks of relieving, 
while they think of debating. He was blackballed out 
of a society for the Belief of ... , because the fervor 

20 of his humanity toiled beyond the formal apprehension 
and creeping processes of his associates. I shall always 
consider this distinction as a patent of nobility in the 
Elia family ! 

Do I mention these seeming inconsistencies to smile 

25 at or upbraid my unique cousin ? Marry, heaven, and all 
good manners, and the understanding that should be 
between kinsfolk, forbid ! With all the strangenesses of 
this strangest of the Ellas, I would not have him in one 
jot or tittle other than he is 5 neither would I barter or 



ESSAYS OF ELI A. 91 

exchange my wild kinsman for the most exact, regular, 
and every way consistent kinsman breathing. 

In my next, reader, I may perhaps give you some ac- 
count of my Cousin Bridget — if you are not already 
surfeited with cousins — and take you by the hand, if 5 
you are willing to go with us, on an excursion which 
we made a summer or two since, in search of more cous- 
ins, — 

''Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire." 



92 CHARLES LAMB. 



MACKEKY END, IK HEETFOEDSHIEE. 



Bridget Elia has been my housekeeper for many 
a long year. I have obligations to Bridget, extending 
beyond the period of memory. We house together, old 
bachelor and maid, in a sort of double singleness ; with 

5 such tolerable comfort, upon the whole, that I for one 
find in myself no sort of disposition to go out upon the 
mountains, with the rash king's offspring, to bewail my 
celibacy. We agree pretty well in our tastes and habits 
— yet so, as " with a difference." We are generally in 

10 harmony, with occasional bickerings — as it should be 
among near relations. Our sympathies are rather un- 
derstood than expressed ; and once, upon my dissembling 
a tone in my voice more kind than ordinary, my cousin 
burst into tears, and complained that I was altered. We 

15 are both great readers in different directions. While I 
am hanging over (for the thousandth time) some passage 
in old Burton, or one of his strange contemporaries, she 
is abstracted in some modern tale or adventure, whereof 
our common reading-table is daily fed with assiduously 

20 fresh supplies. Narrative teases me. I have little con- 
cern in the progress of events. She must have a story — 
well, ill, or indifferently told — so there be life stirring 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 93 

in it, and plenty of good or evil accidents. The fluctua- 
tions of fortune in fiction, and almost in real life, have 
ceased to interest, or operate but dully upon me. Out- 
of-the-way humors and opinions — heads with some di- 
verting twist in them — the oddities of authorship please 5 
me most. My cousin has a native disrelish of anything 
that sounds odd or bizarre. Nothing goes down with her 
that is quaint, irregular, or out of the road of common 
sympathy. She " holds Nature more clever." I can 
pardon her blindness to the beautiful obliquities of the 10 
Religio Medici ; but she must apologize to me for certain 
disrespectful insinuations, which she has been pleased to 
throw out latterly, touching the intellectuals of a dear fa- 
vorite of mine, of the last century but one, — the thrice 
noble, chaste, and virtuous, but again somewhat fantas- 15 
tical, and original-brained, generous Margaret Newcastle. 

It has been the lot of my cousin, of tener perhaps than 
I could have wished, to have had for her associates and 
mine, freethinkers, — leaders and disciples, of novel phi- 
losophies and systems ; but she neither wrangles with, 20 
nor accepts their opinions. That Avhich was good and 
venerable to her when a child retains its authority over 
her mind still. She never juggles or plays tricks with 
her understanding. 

We are both of us inclined to be a little too positive ; 25 
and I have observed the result of our disputes to be al- 
most uniformly this, — that in matters of fact, dates, and 
circumstances, it turns out that I was in the right, and 
my cousin in the wrong. But where we have differed 



94 CHARLES LAMB. 

upon moral points, upon something proper to be done 
or let alone, whatever heat of opposition, or steadiness 
of conviction, I set out with, I am sure always, in the 
long-run, to be brought over to her way of thinking. 

5 I must touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman with 

' a gentle hand, for Bridget does not like to be told of her 

faults. She hath an awkward trick (to say no worse 

of it) of reading in company ; at which times she will 

answer yes or no to a question, without fully understand- 

10 ing its purport, — which is provoking, and derogatory 
in the highest degree to the dignity of the j)utter of the 
said question. Her presence of mind is equal to the 
most pressing trials of life, but will sometimes desert 
her upon trifling occasions. When the purpose requires 

15 it, and is a thing of moment, she can speak to it greatly ; 
but in matters which are not stuff of the conscience, she 
hath been known sometimes to let slip a word less sea- 
sonably. 

Her education in youth was not much attended to ; 

20 and she happily missed all that train of female garni- 
ture, which passeth by the name of accomplishments. 
She was tumbled early, by accident or design, into a 
spacious closet of good old English reading without much 
selection or prohibition, and browsed at. will upon that 

25 fair and wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty girls, they 
should be brought up exactly in this fashion. I know 
not whether their chance in wedlock might not be dimin- 
ished by it ; but I can answer for it that it makes (if the 
worst come to the worst) most incomparable old maids. 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 95 

In a season of distress she is the, truest comforter ; 
but in the teasing accidents and minor perplexities, 
which do not call out the will to meet them, she some- 
times maketh matters worse by an excess of participa- 
tion. If she does not always divide your trouble, upon 5 
the pleasanter occasions of life she is sure always to 
treble your satisfaction. She is excellent to be at a play 
with, or upon a visit ; but best when she goes a journey 

with you. 

We made an excursion together a few summers since lO 
into Hertfordshire, to beat up the quarters of some of 
our less-known relations in that fine corn country. 

The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End, or 
Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps more properly, in 
some old maps of Hertfordshire ; a farm-house, — delight- 15 
fully situated within a gentle walk from Wheathamp- 
stead. I can just remember having been there on a 
visit to a great-aunt when I was a child, under the care 
of Bridget, who, as I have said, is older than myself by 
some ten years. I wish that I could throw into a heap 20 
the remainder of our joint existences, that we might 
share them in equal division. But that is impossible. 
The house was at that time in the occupation of a sub- 
stantial yeoman, who had married my grandmother's 
sister. His name was Gladman. My grandmother was 25 
a Bruton, married to a Field. The Gladmans and the 
Brutons are still flourishing in that part of the country, 
but the Fields are almost extinct. More than forty 
years had elapsed since the visit I speak of, and for the 



96 CHAELES LAMB. 

greater portion of that period we had lost sight of the 
other two branches also. Who or what sort of persons 
inherited Mackery End — kindred or strange folk — we 
were afraid almost to conjecture, but determined some 

5 day to explore. 

By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble park 
at Luton in our way from Saint Albans, we arrived at 
the spot of our anxious curiosity about noon. The sight 
of the old farmhouse, though every trace of it was 

10 effaced from my recollection, affected me with a pleas- 
ure which I had not experienced for many a year. For 
though /had forgotten it, we had never forgotten being 
there together, and we had been talking about Mackery 
End all our lives, till memory on my part became 

15 mocked with a phantom of itself, and I thought I knew 
the aspect of a place, which, when present, oh, how un- 
like it was to that which I had conjured up so many 
times instead of it ! 

Still the air breathed balmily about it ; the season 

20 was in the '' heart of June," and I could say with the 

poet, — 

" But thou, that didst appear so fair 
To fond imagiriation, 
Dost rival in the light of day 
25 Her delicate creation! 

Bridget's was more a waking bliss than mine, for she 
easily remembered her old acquaintance again, — some 
altered features of course, a little grudged at. At first, 
indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy; but the 



ESSAYS OF ELI A. 97 

scene soon reconfirmed itself in her affections, — and 
she traversed every outpost of the old mansion, to the 
wood-house, the orchard, the place where the pigeon- 
house had stood (house and birds were alike flown) — 
with a breathless impatience of recognition, which was 5 
more pardonable, perhaps, than decorous at the age of 
fifty odd. But Bridget in some things is behind her 
years. 

The only thing left was to get into the house, — and 
that was a difficulty which to me singly would have 10 
been insurmountable ; for I am terribly shy in making 
myself known to strangers and out-of-date kinsfolk. 
Love, stronger than scruple, winged my cousin in with- 
out me ; but she soon returned with a creature that 
might have sat to a sculptor for the image of Welcome. 15 
It was the youngest of the Gladmans, who, by mar- 
riage with a Bruton, had become mistress of the old 
mansion. A comely brood are the Brutons. Six of 
them, females, were noted as the handsomest young 
women in the county. But this adopted Bruton, in my 20 
mind, was better than they all — more comely. She 
was born too late to have remembered me. She just 
recollected in early life to have had her cousin Bridget 
once pointed out to her, climbing a stile. But the name 
of kindred and of cousinship was enough. Those slen- 2S 
der ties, that prove slight as gossamer in the rending 
atmosphere of a metropolis, bind faster, as we found it, 
in hearty, homely, loving Hertfordshire. In five min- 
utes we were as thoroughly acquainted as if we had 



98 CHARLES LAMB. 

been born and bred up together ; were familiar, even to 
the calling each other by our Christian names. So 
Christians should call one another. To have seen Brid- 
get and her — it was like the meeting of the two scrip- 

5 tural cousins ! There was a grace and dignity, an 

amplitude of form and stature, answering to her mind, 

'in this farmer's wife, which would have shined in a 

palace — or so we thought it. We were made welcome 

by husband and wife equally — we, and our friend that 

10 was Avith us. I had almost forgotten him, — but B. F. 
will not so soon forget that meeting, if peradventure he 
shall read this on the far distant shores where the kan- 
garoo haunts. The fatted calf was made ready, or 
rather was already so, as if in anticipation of our com- 

15 ing ; and, after an appropriate glass of native wine, 
never let me forget with what honest pride this hospit- 
able cousin made us proceed to Wheathampstead, to in- 
troduce us (as some new-found rarity) to her mother 
and sister Gladmans, who did indeed know something 

20 more of us, at a time when she almost knew nothing. 
With what corresponding kindness we were received by 
them also, — how Bridget's memory, exalted by the oc- 
casion, warmed into a thousand half-obliterated recollec- 
tions of things and persons, to my utter astonishment 

25 and her own, — and to the astoundment of B. F., who 
sat by, almost the only thing that was not a cousin 
there, — old effaced images of more than half-forgotten 
names, and circumstances still crowding back upon her 
as words written in lemon come out upon exposure to 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 99 

a friendly warmth ; when I forget all this, then may my 
country cousins forget me, and Bridget no more remem- 
ber that in the days of weakling infancy I was her 
tender charge, — as I have been her care in foolish man- 
hood since, — in those pretty pastoral walks long ago 
about Mackery End, in Hertfordshire. 



100 CHABLES LAMB. 



THE OLD BENCHEES OF THE INNEE TEMPLE. 



I WAS born and passed the first seven years of my 
life in the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its 
fountain, its river, I had almost said, — for in those young 
years, what was this king of rivers to me but a stream 
5 that watered our pleasant places ? — these are of my 
oldest recollections. I repeat, to this day, no verses to 
myself more frequently, or with kindlier emotion, than 
those of Spenser, where he speaks of this spot, — 

" There when they came, whereas those bricky towers, 
10 The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride, 

Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers, 
There whylonie wont the Templar knights to bide, 
Till they decayed through pride." 

Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis. 

15 What a transition for a countryman visiting London for 
the first time — the passing from the crowded Strand or 
Fleet Street, by unexpected avenues, into its magnificent 
ample squares, its classic green recesses ! What a cheer- 
ful, liberal look hath that portion of it, which, from 

20 three sides, overlooks the greater garden ; that goodly 

pile — 

"Of building strong, albeit of Paper higlit," 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 101 

confronting with massy contrast the lighter, older, 
more fantastically shrouded one, named of Harcourt, 
with the cheerful Crown-office Row (place of my kindly 
engendure), right opposite the stately stream, which 
washes the garden-foot with her yet scarcely trade-pol- 5 
luted waters, and seems but just weaned from her 
Twickenham Naiads ! A man would give something to 
have been born in such places. What a collegiate aspect 
has that fine Elizabethan hall, where the fountain plays, 
which I have made to rise and fall, how many times ! 10 
to the astoundraent of the young urchins, my contem- 
poraries, who, not being able to guess at its recondite 
machinery, were almost tempted to hail the wondrous 
work as magic ! What an antique air had the now 
almost eifaced sun-dials, with their moral inscriptions, 15 
seeming coevals with that Time which they measured, 
and to take their revelations of its flight immediately 
from heaven, holding correspondence with the fountain 
of light ! How would the dark line steal imperceptibly 
on, watched by the eye of childood, eager to detect its 20 
movement, never catched, nice as an evanescent cloud, 
or the first arrest of sleep ! 

" Ah ! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand 
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived! " 

What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous em- 25 
bowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dulness 
of communication, compared with the simple altar-like 
structure, and silent heart-language of the old dial ! It 



102 CHARLES LAMB. 

stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is 
it almost everywhere vanished ? If its business use be 
superseded by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, 
its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance. It 

5 spoke of moderate labors, of pleasures not protracted 
after sunset, of temperance, and good hours. It was the 
primitive clock, the horologe of the first world. Adam 
could scarce have missed it in Paradise. It was the 
measure appropriate for sweet plants and flowers to 

10 spring by, for the birds to apportion their silver war- 
blings by, for flocks to pasture and be led to fold by. 
The shepherd " carved it out quaintly in the sun ; " and, 
turning philosopher by the very occupation, provided it 
with mottoes more touching than tombstones. It was a 

15 pretty device of the gardener, recorded by Marvell, who, 
in the days of artificial gardening, made a dial out of 
herbs and flowers. I must quote his verses a little 
higher up, for they are full, as all his serious poetry 
was, of a witty delicacy. They will not come in awk- 

20 wardly, I hope, in a talk of fountains, and sun-dials. 
He is speaking of sweet garden scenes, — 

" What wondrous life is this I lead! 

Ripe apples drop about iny head. 

The luscious clusters of the vine 
25 Upon my mouth do crush their wine. 

The nectarine, and curious peach, 

Into my hands themselves do reach. 

Stumbling on melons, as I pass, 

Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass. 
30 Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less 

Withdraws into its happiness. 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 103 

The mind, that ocean, where each kind 

Does straight its own resemblance find; 

Yet it creates, transcending these 

Far other worlds, and other seas, 

Annihilating all that's made 5 

To a green thought in a green shade. 

Here at the fountain's sliding foot. 

Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, 

Casting the body's vest aside, 

My soul into the boughs does glide; 10 

There, like a bird, it sits and sings, 

Then wets and claps its silver wings, 

And, till prepared for longer flight, 

Waves in its plumes the various light. 

How well the skilful gardener drew, 15- 

Of flowers and herbs, this dial new, 

Where, from above, the milder sun 

Does through a fragrant zodiac run; 

And, as it works, the industrious bee 

Coinputes its time as well as we, 20 

How could such sweet and wholesome hours 

Bereckon'd, but with herbs and flowers?" i 

The artificial fountains of tlie metropolis are, in like 
manner, fast vanishing. Most of them are dried up, or 
bricked over. Yet, where one is left, as in that little 25 
green nook behind the South Sea House, what a fresh- 
ness it gives to the dreary pile ! Four little winged 
marble boys used to play their virgin fancies, spouting 
out ever fresh streams from their innocent-wanton lips 
in the square of Lincoln' s-inn, when I was uo bigger than 30 
they were figured. They are gone, and the spring 
choked up. The fashion, they tell me, is gone by, and 
these things are esteemed childish. Why not then grat- 

1 From a copy of verses entitled The Garden. 



104 CHAELES LAMB. 

ify children, by letting them stand ? Lawyers, I sup- 
pose, were children once. They are awakening images 
to them at least. Why must everything smack of man 
and mannish ? Is the world all grown up ? Is child- 

5 hood dead ? Or is there not in the bosoms of the wisest 
and the best some of the child's heart left, to respond to 
its earliest enchantments ? The figures were grotesque. 
Are the stiffed-wigged living figures, that still flitter and 
chatter about that area, less Gothic in appearance ? or 

10 is the splutter of their hot rhetoric one-half so refreshing 
and innocent as the little cool playful stream those ex- 
ploded cherubs uttered ? 

They have lately gothicized the entrance to the Inner 
Temple-hall, and the library front ; to assimilate them, 

15 I suppose, to the body of the hall, which they do not at 
all resemble. What is become of the winged horse that 
stood over the former ? a stately arms ! and who has 
removed those frescoes of the Virtues, which Italianized 
the end of the Paper Buildings ? — my first hint of alle- 

20 gory ! They must account to me for these things, which 
I miss so greatly. 

The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used to call the 
parade ; but the traces are passed away of the footsteps 
which made its pavement awful ! It is become common 

25 and profane. The old benchers had it almost sacred to 
themselves, in the forepart of the day at least. They 
might not be sided or jostled. Their air and dress as- 
serted the parade. You left wide spaces betwixt you, 
when you passed them. We walk on even terms with 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



105 



their successors. The roguish eye of J 11, ever ready 

to be delivered of a jest, almost invites a stranger to vie 
a repartee with it. But what insolent familiar durst 
have mated Thomas Coventry ? — whose person was a 
quadrate, his step massy and elephantine, his face square 5 
as the lion's, his gait peremptory and path-keeping, in- 
divertible from his way as a moving column, the scare- 
crow of his inferiors, the browbeater of equals and supe- 
riors, who made a solitude of children wherever he came, 
for they fled his insufferable presence, as they would 10 
have shunned an Elisha bear. His growl was as thun- 
der in their ears, whether he spake to them in mirth or 
in rebuke, his invitatory notes being, indeed, of all, the 
most repulsive and horrid. Clouds of snuff, aggravating 
the natural terrors of his speech, broke from each ma- 15 
jestic nostril, darkening the air. He took it not by 
pinches, but a palmful at once, diving for it under the 
mighty flaps of his old-fashioned waistcoat pocket ; his 
waistcoat red and angry, his coat dark rappee, tinctured 
by dye original, and by adjuncts, with buttons of obso- 20 
lete gold. And so he paced the terrace. 

By his side a milder form was sometimes to be seen ; 
the pensive gentility of Samuel Salt. They were co- 
evals, and had nothing but that and their benchership in 
common. In politics Salt was a whig, and Coventry a 25 
stanch tory. Many a sarcastic growl did the latter cast 
out — for Coventry had a rough, spinous humor — at the 
political confederates of his associate, which rebounded 
from the gentle bosom of the latter like cannon-balls 
from wool. You could not ruflle Samuel Salt. 30 



106 CHARLES LAMB. 

S. had the reputation of being a very clever man, and 
of excellent discernment in the chamber practice of the 
law. I suspect his knowledge did not amount to much. 
When a case of difficult disposition of money, testamen- 

5 tary or otherwise, came before him, he ordinarily handed 
it over with a few instructions to his man Lovel, who 
was a quick little fellow, and would despatch it out of 
hand by the light of natural understanding, of which he 
had an uncommon share. It was incredible what repute 

10 for talents S. enjoyed by the mere trick of gravity. He 
was a shy man ; a child might pose him in a minute, — 
indolent and procrastinating to the last degree. Yet 
men would give him credit for vast application, in spite 
of himself. He was not to be trusted with himself with 

15 impunity. He never dressed for a dinner party but he 
forgot his sword — they wore swords then — or some 
other necessary part of his equipage. Lovel had his eye 
upon him on all these occasions, and ordinarily gave him 
his cue. If there was anything which he could speak 

20 unseasonably, he was sure to do it. He was to dine at 
a relative's of the unfortunate Miss Blandy on the day 
of her execution; — and L., who had a wary foresight of 
his probable hallucinations, before he set out schooled 
him with great anxiety not in any possible manner to 

25 allude to her story that day. S. promised faithfully to 
observe the injunction. He had not been seated in the 
parlor, where the company was expecting the dinner 
summons, four minutes, when, a pause in the conversa- 
tion ensuing, he got up, looked out of window, and pull- 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 107 

ing down his ruffles — an ordinary motion witli him — 
observed, "it was a gloomy day," and added, "Miss 
Blandy must be hanged by this time, I suppose." In- 
stances of this sort were perpetual. Yet S. was thought 
by some of the greatest men of his time a fit person to 5 
be consulted, not alone in matters pertaining to the law, 
but in the ordinary niceties and embarrassments of con- 
duct—from force of manner entirely. He never laughed. 
He had the same good fortune among the female world, 

was a known toast with the ladies, and one or two are 10 

said to have died for love of him — I suppose, because 
he never trifled or talked gallantry with them, or paid 
them, indeed, hardly common attentions. He had a fine 
face and person, but wanted, methought, the spirit that 
should have shown them off with advantage to the women. 15 

His eye lacked lustre. Not so, thought Sasan P ; 

who, at the advanced age of sixty, was seen, in the cold 
evening time, unaccompanied, wetting the pavement of 

B d Eow, with tears that fell in drops which might 

be heard, because her friend had died that day — he 20 
whom she had pursued with a hopeless passion for the 
last forty years, — a passion which years could not ex- 
tinguish or abate; nor the long-resolved yet gently-en- 
forced, puttings off of unrelenting bachelorhood dissuade 

from its cherished purpose. Mild Susan P , thou 25 

hast now thy friend in heaven ! 

Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble family of 
that name. He passed his youth in contracted circum- 
stances, which gave him early those parsimouious habits 



108 CHAELES LAMB. 

which in life never forsook him ; so that, with one wind- 
fall or another, about the time I knew him he was mas- 
ter of four or five hundred thousand pounds ; nor did 
he look or walk worth a moidore less. He lived in a 

5 gloomy house opposite the pump in Serjeant's-inn, Fleet 
Street. J., the counsel, is doing self-imposed penance 
in it, for what reason I divine not, at this day. C. had 
an agreeable seat at North Cray, where he seldom spent 
above a day or two at a time in the summer ; but pre- 

10 ferred, during the hot months, standing at his window 
in this damp, close, well-like mansion, to watch, as he 
said, "the maids drawing water all day long." I sus- 
pect he had his within-door reasons for the preference. 
Mic currus et arma fuere. He might think his treasures 

15 more safe. His house had the aspect of a strong-box. 
C. was a close hunks, ■ — a hoarder rather than a miser, — 
or, if a miser, none of the mad Elwes breed, who have 
brought discredit upon a character, which cannot exist 

. without certain admirable points of steadiness and unity 

20 of purpose. One may hate a true miser, but cannot, I 
suspect, so easily despise him. By taking care of the 
pence, he is often enabled to part with the pounds, upon 
a scale that leaves us careless, generous fellows halt- 
ing at an immeasurable distance behind. C. gave away 

25 £30,000 at once in his lifetime to a blind charit}^ His 
housekeeping was severely looked after, but he kept the 
table of a gentleman. He would know who came in and 
who went out of his house, but his kitchen chimney was 
never suffered to freeze. 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 109 

Salt was his opposite in this, as in all — never knew 
what he was worth in the world ; and having but a com- 
petency for his rank, which his indolent habits were 
little calculated to improve, might have suffered severely 
if he had not had honest people about him. Lovel took 5 
care of everything. He was at once his clerk, his good 
servant, his dresser, his friend, his " flapper," his guide, 
stop-watch, auditor, treasurer. He did nothing without 
consulting Lovel, or failed in anything without expect- 
ing and fearing his admonishing. He put himself almost 10 
too much in his hands, had they not been the purest in 
the world. He resigned his title almost to respect as a 
master, if L. could ever have forgotten for a moment 
that he was a servant. 

I knew this Lovel. He was a man of an incorrigible 15 
and losing honesty. A good fellow, withal, and "would 
strike." In the cause of the oppressed he never consid- 
ered inequalities, or calculated the number of his oppo- 
nents. He once wrested a sword out of the hand of a man 
of quality that had drawn upon him ; and pommelled 20 
him severely with the hilt of it. The swordsman had 
offered insult to a female — an occasion upon which no 
odds against him could have prevented the interference 
of Lovel. He would stand next day bareheaded to the 
same person, modestly to excuse his interference — for 25 
L. never forgot rank, where something better was not 
concerned. . L. was the liveliest little fellow breathing, 
had a face as gay as Garrick's, whom he was said greatly 
to resemble (I have a portrait of him which confirms it). 



110 CHARLES LAMB. 

possessed a fine turn for humorous poetry — next to 
Swift and Prior — moulded heads in clay or plaster of 
Paris to admiration, by the dint of natural genius 
merely; turned cribbage boards, and such small cabinet 

5 toys, to perfection ; took a hand at quadrille or bowls 
with equal facility ; made punch better than any man of 
his degree in England ; had the merriest quips and con- 
ceits ; and was altogether as brimful of rogueries and 
inventions as you could desire. He was a brother of the 

10 angle, moreover, and just such a free, hearty, honest 
companion as Mr. Izaak Walton would have chosen to 
go a-fishing with. I saw him in his old age and the de- 
cay of his faculties, palsy-smitten, in the last sad stage 
of human weakness — "a remnant most forlorn of what 

15 he was " — yet even then his eye would light up upon 
the mention of his favorite Garrick. He was greatest, 
he would say, in Bayes — " was upon the stage nearly 
throughout the whole performance, and as busy as a bee." 
At intervals, too, he would speak of his former life, and 

20 how he came up a little boy from Lincoln to go to ser- 
vice, and how his mother cried at parting with him, and 
how he returned, after some few j^ears' absence, in his 
smart new livery, to see her, and she blessed herself at 
the change, and could hardly be brought to believe that 

25 it was "her own bairn." And then, the excitement sub- 
siding, he would weep, till I have wished that sad second 
childhood might have a mother still to lay its head upon 
her laj). But the common mother of us all in no long 
time after received him gently into hers. 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. Ill 

With Coventry and with Salt, in their walks upon 
the terrace, most commonly Peter Pierson would join to 
make up a third. They did not walk linked arm in 
arm in those days, — " as now our stout triumvirs sweep 
the streets," — bat generally with both hands folded 5 
behind them for state, or with one at least behind, the 
other carrying a cane. P. was a benevolent, but not a 
prepossessing man. He had that in his face which you 
could not term unhappiness ; it rather implied an in- 
capacity of being happy. His cheeks were colorless lO 
even to whiteness. His look was uninviting, resembling 
(but without his sourness) that of our great philanthro- 
pist. I know that he did good acts, but I could never 
make out what he luas. Contemporary with these, but 

subordinate, was Daines Barrington — another oddity 15 

he walked burly and square — in imitation, I think, of 
Coventry — howbeit he attained not to the dignity of 
his prototype. Nevertheless, he did pretty well, upon 
the strength of being a tolerable antiquarian, and having 
a brother a bishop. When the account of his year's 20 
treasurership came to be audited, the following singular 
charge was unanimously disallowed by the bench : " Item 
disbursed Mr. Allen, the gardener, twenty shillings, for 
stuff to poison the sparrows, by my orders.'' Next to 
him was old Barton — a jolly negation, who took upon 25 
him the ordering of the bills of fare for the parliament 
chamber, where the benchers dine — answering to the 
combination rooms at College — much to the easement 
of his less epicurean brethren. I know nothing more of 



112 CHARLES LAMB. 

him. Then Eead and Twopeny — Eead, good-humored 
and personable — Twopeny, good-humored, but thin, and 
felicitous in jests upon his own figure. If T. was thin, 
Wharry was attenuated and fleeting. Many must re- 

5 member him (for he was rather of later date) and his 
singular gait, which was performed by three steps and 
a jump regularly succeeding. The steps were little 
efforts, like that of a child beginning to walk ; the jump 
comparatively vigorous, as a foot to an inch. Where he 

10 learned this figure, or what occasioned it, I could never 
discover. It was neither graceful in itself, nor seemed 
to answer the purpose any better than common walking. 
The extreme tenuity of his frame, I suspect, set him 
upon it. It was a trial of poising. Twopeny would 

15 often rally him upon his leanness, and hail him as 
brother Lusty ; but W. had no relish of a joke. His 
features were spiteful. I have heard that he would 
pinch his cat's ears extremely, when anything had of- 
fended him. Jackson — the omniscient Jackson he was 

20 called — was of this period. He had the reputation of 
possessing more multifarious knowledge than any man 
of his time. He was the Friar Bacon of the less literate 
portion of the Temple. I remember a pleasant passage, 
of the cook applying to him, with much formality of 

25 apology, for instructions how to write down edge bone 
of beef in his bill of commons. He was supposed to 
know, if any man in the world did. He decided the 
orthography to be — as I have given it — fortifying his 
authority with such anatomical reasons as dismissed the 



ESSAYS OF ELI A. 113 

manciple (for the time) learned and happy. Some do 
spell it yet, perversely, aitch bone, from a fanciful re- 
semblance between its shape and that of the aspirate so 
denominated. I had almost forgotten Mingay with the 
iron hand — but he was somewhat later. He had lost his 5 
right hand by some accident, and supplied it with a 
grappling-hook, which he wielded with a tolerable adroit- 
ness. I detected the substitute before I was old enough 
to reason v^^hether it were artificial or not. I remember 
the astonishment it raised in me. He was a blustering, lo 
loud-talking person ; and I reconciled the phenomenon 
to my ideas as an emblem of power — somewhat like 
the horns in the forehead of Michael Angelo's Moses. 
Baron Maseres, who walks (or did till very lately) in 
the costume of the reign of George the Second, closes 15 
my imperfect recollections of the old benchers of the 
Inner Temple. 

Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled ? Or, if the like 
of you exist, why exist they no more for me ? Ye in- 
explicable, half -understood appearances, why comes in 20 
reason to tear away the preternatural mist, bright or 
gloomy, that enshrouded you ? Why make ye so sorry 
a figure in my relation, who made up to me — to my 
childish eyes — the mythology of the Temple ? In 
those days I saw gods, as ^'old men covered with a 25 
mantle," walking upon the earth. Let the dreams of 
classic idolatry perish, — extinct be the fairies and fairy 
trumpery of legendary fabling in the heart of child- 
hood, there will, forever, spring up a well of innocent 



114 CHAELES LAMB. 

or wholesome superstition, — the seeds of exaggeration 
will be busy there, and vital — from everyday forms 
educing the unknown and the uncommon. In that little 
Goshen there will be light, when the grown world floun- 

5 ders about in the darkness of sense and materiality. 
While childhood and while dreams, reducing childhood, 
shall be left, imagination shall not have spread her 
holy wings totally to fly the earth. 

P. S. — I have done injustice to the soft shade of 

10 Samuel Salt. See what it is to trust to imperfect mem- 
ory, and the erring notices of childhood ! Yet I protest 
I always thought that he had been a bachelor ! This 
gentleman, E,. N. informs me, married young, and losing 
his lady in childbed within the first year of their union, 

15 fell into a deep melancholy, from the effects of which, 
probably, he never thoroughly recovered. In what a 
light does this place his rejection (0 call it by a gentler 

name !) of mild Susan P , unravelling into beauty 

certain peculiarities of this very shy and retiring char- 

20 acter ! Henceforth let no one receive the narratives of 
Elia for true records ! They are, in truth, but shadows 
of fact — verisimilitudes, not verities — or sitting but 
upon the remote edges and outskirts of history. He is 
no such honest chronicler as P. N., and would have 

25 done better, perhaps, to have consulted that gentleman 
before he sent those incondite reminiscences to press. 
But the worthy sub-treasurer — who respects his old 
and his new masters — would but have been puzzled at 
the indecorous liberties of Elia. The good man wots 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 115 

not, peradventure, of the license which Magazines have 
arrived at in this plain-speaking age, or hardly dreams 
of their existence beyond the Gentleman^ s — his farthest 
monthly excursions in this nature having been long con- 
fined to the holy ground of honest Urban^s obituary. 5 
May it be long before his own name shall help to swell 
those columns of unenvied flattery ! Meantime, ye 
New Benchers of the Inner Temple, cherish him kindly, 
for he is himself the kindliest of human creatures. 
Should infirmities overtake him — he is yet in green 10 
and vigorous senility — make allowances for them, re- 
membering that '' ye yourselves are old.'^ So may the 
Winged Horse, your ancient badge and cognizance, still 
flourish ! so may future Hookers and Seldens illustrate 
your church and chambers ! so may the sparrows, in 15 
default of more melodious choristers, unpoisoned, hop 
about your walks ! so may the fresh-colored and cleanly 
nursery-maid, who, by leave, airs her playful charge in 
your stately gardens, drop her prettiest blushing cour- 
tesy as ye pass, reductive of juvenescent emotion ! so 20 
may the younkers of this generation eye you, pacing your 
stately terrace, with the same superstitious veneration 
with which the child Elia gazed on the Old Worthies 
that solemnized the parade before ye. 



116 CHARLES LAMB 



DEEAM-CHILDEEN ; A EEYEEY. 



Children love to listen to stories about their elders, 
wlien they were children ; to stretch their imagination 
to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle, or gran- 
dame, whom they never saw. It was in this spirit that 

5 my little ones crept about me the other evening to hear 
about their great-grandmother Field, who lived in a great 
house in Norfolk (a hundred times bigger than that in 
which they and papa lived), which had been the scene — 
so at least it was generally believed in that part of the 

10 country — of the tragic incidents which they had lately 
become familiar with from the ballad of the Children 
in the Wood. Certain it is that the whole story of the 
children and their cruel uncle was to be seen fairly 
carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece of the great 

15 hall, the whole story down to the Eobin Eedbreast ; till 
a foolish rich person pulled it down to set up a marble 
one of modern invention in its stead, with no story upon 
it. Here Alice put on one of her dear mother's looks, 
too tender to be called upbraiding. Then I went on to 

20 say how religious and how good their great-grandmother 
Field was, how beloved and respected by everybody, 
though she was not indeed the mistress of this great 



ESSAYS OF ELI A. 117 

house, but had only the charge of it (and yet in some 
respects she might be said to be the mistress of it too), 
committed to her by the owner, who preferred living in 
a newer and more fashionable mansion which he had 
purchased somewhere in the adjoining county ; but still 5 
she lived in it in a manner as if it had been her own, 
and kept up the dignity of the great house in a sort 
while she lived, which afterwards came to decay, and 
was nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments 
stripped and carried away to the owner's other house, 10 
where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if 
some one were to carry away the old tombs they had 
seen lately at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady C.'s 
tawdry gilt drawing-room. Here John smiled, as much 
as to say, ^' that would be foolish indeed." And then 1 15 
told how, when she came to die, her funeral was attended 
by a concourse of all the poor, and some of the gentry 
too, of the neighborhood for many miles round, to show 
their respect for her memory, because she had been such 
a good and religious woman ; so good, indeed, that she 20 
knew all the Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great part of 
the Testament besides. Here little Alice spread her 
hands. Then I told her what a tall, upright, graceful 
person their great-grandmother Eield once was ; and 
how in her youth she was esteemed the best dancer, — 25 
here Alice's little right foot played an involuntary move- 
ment, till, upon my looking grave, it desisted, — the best 
dancer, I was saying, in the county, till a cruel disease, 
called a cancer, came, and bowed her down with pain ; 



118 CHARLES LAMB. 

but it could never bend her good spirits, or make them 
stoop, but they were still upright, because she was so 
good and religious. Then I told how she was used to 
sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great lone 

5 house ; and how she believed that an apparition of two 
infants was to be seen at midnight gliding up and down 
the great staircase near where she slept, but she said 
^' those innocents would do her no harm ; " and how 
frightened I used to be, though in those days I had my 

10 maid to sleep with me, because I was never half so good 
or religious as she, — and yet I never saw the infants. 
Here John expanded all his eyebrows and tried to look 
courageous. Then I told how good she was to all her 
grand-children, having us to the great house in the holi- 

15 days, where I in particular used to spend many hours 
by myself, in gazing upon the old busts of the twelve 
Csesars, that had been Emperors of Rome, till the old 
marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be turned 
into marble with them ; how I never could be tired with 

20 roaming about that huge mansion, with its vast empty 
rooms, with their worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, 
and carved oaken panels, with the gilding almost rubbed 
out, — sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, 
w^hich I had almost to myself, unless when now and then 

25 a solitary gardening man would cross me, — and how the 
nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without my 
ever offering to pluck them, because they were forbidden 
fruit, unless now and then, — and because I had more 
pleasure in strolling about among the old melancholy- 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 119 

looking yew-trees, or the firs, and picking np the red 
berries, and the fir-apples, which were good for nothing 
but to look at, — or in lying about upon the fresh grass 
with all the fine garden smells around me, — or basking 
in the orangery, till I could almost fancy myself ripening 5 
too along with the oranges and the limes in that grateful 
warmth, — or in watching the dace that darted to and 
fro in the fish-pond, at the bottom of the garden, with 
here and there a great sulky pike hanging midway down 
the water in silent state, as if it mocked at their imper- 10 
tinent friskings : — I had more pleasure in these busy- 
idle diversions than in all the sweet flavors of peaches, 
nectarines, oranges, and such-like common baits of chil- 
dren. Here John slyly deposited back upon the plate a 
bunch of grapes which, not unobserved by Alice, he had 15 
meditated dividing with her ; and both seemed willing to 
relinquish them for the present as irrelevant. Then, in 
somewhat a more heightened tone, I told how, though 
their great-grandmother Field loved all her grandchil- 
dren, yet in an especial manner she might be said to love 20 

their uncle, John L , because he was so handsome 

and spirited a youth, and a king to the rest of us ; and, 
instead of moping about in solitary corners, like some of ' 
us, he would mount the most mettlesome horse he could 
get, when but an imp no bigger than themselves, and 25 
make it carry him half over the county in a morning, 
and join the hunters when there were any out, — and 
yet he loved the old great house and gardens too, but 
had too much spirit to be always pent up within their 



120 CHARLES LAMB. 

boundaries, — and how their uncle grew up to man's 
estate as brave as he was handsome, to the admiration 
of everybody, but of their great-grandmother Field most 
especially ; and how he used to carry me upon his back 

5 when I was a lame-footed boy — for he was a good bit 
older than me — many a mile when I could not walk for 
pain ; — and how in after-life he became lame-footed too, 
and I did not always (I fear) make allowances enough 
for him when he was impatient and in pain, nor remem- 

10 ber sufficiently how considerate he had been to me when 
I was lame-footed; and how when he died, though he 
had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died a 
great while ago, such a distance there is betwixt life and 
death ; and how I bore his death, as I thought, pretty 

15 well at first, but afterwards it haunted and haunted me ; 
and though I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, 
and as I think he would have done if I had died, yet I 
missed him all day long, and knew not till then how 
much I had loved him. I missed his kindness, and I 

20 missed his crossness, and wished him to be alive again, 
to be quarrelling with him (for we quarrelled some- 
times), rather than not have him again, and was as un- 
easy without him, as he their poor uncle must have been 
when the doctor took off his limb. Here the children 

25 fell a-crying, and asked if their little mourning which 
they had on was not for Uncle John, and they looked 
up, and prayed me not to go on about their uncle, but to 
tell them some stories about their pretty dead mother. 
Then I told how, for seven long years, in hope some- 



ESSAYS OF ELI A. 121 

times, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted 

the fair Alice W n : and, as mncli as children could 

understand, I explained to them what coyness and diffi- 
culty and denial meant in maidens, — when suddenly, 
turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at 5 
her eyes with such a reality of representment, that I 
became in doubt which of them stood there before me, 
or whose that bright hair was ; and while I stood gazing, 
both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, re- 
ceding, and still receding, till nothing at last but two lo 
mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, 
which, without speech, strangely impressed upon me the 
effects of speech : " We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor 
are we children at all. The children of Alice call Bar- 
trum father. We are nothing ; less than nothing, and 15 
dreams. We are only what might have been, and must 
wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages 
before we have existence, and a name ; " — and imme- 
diately awaking, I found myself quietly seated in my 
bachelor armchair, where I had fallen asleep, with the 2C 
faithful Bridget unchanged by my side, — but John L. 
(or James Elia) was gone forever. 



122 CRABLES LAMB. 



BLAKESMOOE IN H SHIEE. 



I DO not know a pleasure more affecting tlian to range 
at will over the deserted apartments of some fine old 
family mansion. The traces of extinct grandeur admit 
of a better passion than envy ; and contemplations on 

5 the great and good, whom we fancy in succession to have 
been its inhabitants, weave for us illusions, incompatible 
with the bustle of modern occupancy and vanities of 
foolish present aristocracy. The same difference of feel- 
ing, I think, attends us between entering an empty and 

10 a crowded church. In the latter it is chance but some 
present human frailty, — an act of inattention on the 
part of some of the auditory, — or a trait of affectation, 
or worse, vainglory on that of the preacher, — puts us by 
our best thoughts, disharmonizing the place and the oc- 

15 casion. But wouldst thou know the beauty of holiness ? 
— go alone on some weekday, borrowing the keys of 
good Master Sexton, traverse the cool aisles of some 
country church ; think of the piety that has kneeled 
there, — the congregations, old and young, that have 

20 found consolation there, — the meek pastor, — the docile 
parishioner. With no disturbing emotions, no cross- 
conflicting comparisons, drink in the tranquillity of the 



ESSAYS OF ELI A. 123 

place, till thou thyself become as fixed and motionless 
as the marble effigies that kneel and weep around thee. 

Journeying northward lately, I could not resist going 
some few miles out of my road to look upon the remains 
of an old great house with which I had been impressed 5 
in this way in infancy. I was apprised that the owner of 
it had lately pulled it down ; still I had a vague notion 
that it could not all have perished, that so much solidity 
with magnificence could not have been crushed all at 
once into the mere dust and rubbish which I found it. lo 

The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift hand 
indeed, and the demolition of a few weeks had reduced 
it to — an antiqaity. 

I was astonished at the indistinction of everything. 
Where had stood the great gates ? What bounded the 15 
court-yard ? Whereabout did the outhouses commence ? 
A few bricks only lay as representatives of that which 
was so stately and so spacious. 

Death does not shrink up his human victim at this 
rate. The burnt ashes of a man weigh more in their 20 
proportion. 

Had I seen these brick-and-mortar knaves at their 
process of destruction, at the plucking of every panel 
I should have felt the varlets at my heart. I should 
have cried out to them to spare a plank at least out of 25 
the cheerful storeroom, in whose hot window-seat I used 
to sit and read Cowley, with the grass-plot before, and 
the hum and flappings of that one solitary wasp that 
ever haunted it about me, — it is in mine ears now, 



124 CHARLES LAMB. 

as oft as summer returns ; or a panel of the yellow- 
room. 

Why, every plank and panel of that house for me had 
magic in it. The tapestried bedrooms — tapestry so 

5 much better than painting — not adorning merely, but 
peopling the wainscots, — at which childhood ever and 
anon would steal a look, shifting its coverlid (replaced 
as quickly) to exercise its tender courage in a momen- 
tary eye-encounter with those stern, bright visages, star- 

10 ing reciprocally, — all Ovid on the walls, in colors vivider 
than his descriptions. Actseon in mid sprout, with the 
unappeasable prudery of Diana ; and the still more pro- 
voking and almost culinary coolness of Dan Phoebus, 
eel-fashion deliberately divesting of Marsyas. 

15 Then, that haunted room, — in which old Mrs. Battle 
died, — whereinto I have crept, but always in the day- 
time, with a passion of fear, and a sneaking curiosity, 
terror-tainted to hold communication with the past. How 
shall tliey build it up again ? 

20 It was an old deserted place, yet not so long deserted 
but that traces of the splendor of past inmates were 
everywhere apparent. Its furniture was still standing 
— even to the tarnished gilt leather battledores and 
crumbling feathers of shuttlecocks in the nursery, which 

25 told that children had once played there. But I was a 
lonely child, and had the range at will of every apart- 
ment, knew every nook and corner, wondered and wor- 
shipped everywhere. 

The solitude of childhood is not so much the mother 



ESSAYS OF ELI A. 125 

of thought, as it is the feeder of love and silence and 
admiration. So strange a passion for the place possessed 
me in those years, that, though there lay — I shame to 
say how few roods distant from the mansion — half hid 
by trees what I judged some romantic lake, such was 5 
the spell which bound me to the house, and such my 
carefulness not to pass its strict and proper precincts, 
that the idle waters lay unexplored for me ; and not till 
late in life, curiosity prevailing over elder devotion, I 
found, to my astonishment, a pretty brawling brook had 10 
been the Lacus Incognitus of my infancy. Variegated 
views, extensive prospects, — and those at no great dis- 
tance from the house, — I was told of such — what were 
they to me, being out of the boundaries of my Eden ? 
So far from a wish to roam, I would have drawn, me- 15 
thought, still closer the fences of my chosen prison ; and 
have been hemmed in by a yet securer cincture of those 
excluding garden walls. I could have exclaimed with 
that garden-loving poet, — 

"Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines; 20 

Curl me about, ye gadding vines; 
And oh so close your circles lace, 
That I may never leave this place; 
But, lest your fetters prove too weak, 

Ere I your silken bondage break, 25 

Do you, O brambles, chain me too, 
And, courteous briars, nail me through." 

I was here as in a lonely temple. Snug firesides, — 
the low-built roof, — parlors ten feet by ten, — frugal 



126 CHABLES LAMB. 

boards, and all the homeliness of home, — these were the 
condition of my birth, — the wholesome soil which I 
was planted in. Yet^ without impeachment to their ten- 
derest lessons, I am not sorry to have had glances of 

5 something beyond ; and to have taken, if but a peep, in 
childhood, at the contrasting accidents of a great for- 
tune. 

To have the feeling of gentility, it is not necessary to 
have been born gentle. The pride of ancestry may be 

10 had on cheaper terms than to be obliged to an importunate 
race of ancestors ; and the coatless antiquary in his un- 
emblazoned cell, revolving the long line of a Mowbray's 
or De Clifford's pedigree, at those sounding names may 
warm himself into as gay a vanity as those who do in- 

15 herit them. The claims of birth are ideal merely, and 
what herald shall go about to strip me of an idea ? Is 
it trenchant to their swords ? can it be hacked off as a 
spur can ? or torn away like a tarnished garter ? 

What else were the families of the great to us ? what 

20 pleasure should we take in their tedious genealogies, or 
their capitulatory brass monuments ? What to us the 
uninterrupted current of their bloods, if our own did not 
answer within us to a cognate and corresponding eleva- 
tion ? 

25 Or wherefore else, tattered and diminished 'Scutch- 
eon that hung upon the time-worn walls of thy princely 
stairs, Blakesmoor ! have I in childhood so oft stood 
poring upon the mystic characters, — thy emblematic 
supporters, with their prophetic ^'Eesurgam/' — till, 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 127 

every dreg of peasantry purging off, I received into my- 
self Very Gentility ? Tliou wert first in my morning 
eyes ; and of nights hast thou detained my steps from 
bedward till it was but a step from gazing at thee to 
dreaming on thee. 5 

This is the only true gentry by adoption ; the verita- 
ble change of blood, and not, as empirics have fabled, by 
transfusion. 

Who it was by dying that had earned the splendid 
trophy, I know not, I inquired not ; but its fading rags, lO 
and colors cobweb-stained, told that its subject was of 
two centuries back. 

And what if my ancestor at that date was some Da- 
moetas, — feeding flocks — not his own, upon the hills of 
Lincoln, — did I in less earnest vindicc^te to myself the 15 
family trappings of this once proud ^gon ? repaying by 
a backward triumph the insults he might possibly have 
heaped in his lifetime upon my poor pastoral progenitor. 

If it were presumption so to speculate, the present 
owners of the mansion had least reason to complain. 20 
They had long forsaken the old house of their fathers 
for a newer trifle ; and I was left to appropriate to my- 
self what images I could pick up, to raise my fancy, or 
to soothe my vanity. 

I was the true descendant of those old W s ; and 25 

not the present family of that name, who had fled the 
old waste places. 

Mine was that gallery of good old family portraits, 
which as I have gone over, giving them in fancy my own 



128 ^^^^THABLES LAMB. 

family name, one — and then another — would seem to 
smile, reaching forward from the canvas, to recognize 
the new relationship ; while the rest looked grave, as it 
seemed, at the vacancy in their dwelling, and thoughts 

5 of fled posterity. 

That Beauty with the cool blue pastoral drapery, and 
a lamb — that hung next the great bay window — with 

the bright yellow H shire hair, and eye of watchet 

hue — so like my Alice ! — I am persuaded she was a 

10 true Elia, Mildred Elia, I take it. 

Mine too, Blakesmoor, was thy noble Marble Hall 
with its mosaic pavements, and its Twelve Caesars, — 
stately busts in marble, — ranged round ; of whose 
countenances, young reader of faces as I was, the frown- 

15 ing beauty of Nero, I remember, had most of my won- 
der ; but the mild Galba had my love. There they 
stood in the coldness of death, yet freshness of immor- 
tality. 

Mine too thy lofty Justice Hall, with its one chair of 

20 authority, high-backed and wickered, once the terror of 
luckless poacher or self-forgetful maiden — so common 
since, that bats have roosted in it. 

Mine too — whose else? — thy costly fruit-garden, 
with its sun-baked southern wall ; the ampler pleasure 

25 garden rising backwards from the house in triple ter- 
races, with fiower-pots now of palest lead, save that a 
speck here and there, saved from the elements, bespake 
their pristine state to have been gilt and glittering ; the 
verdant quarters backwarder still ; and, stretching still 



ESSAYS OF ELIA, 129 

beyond, in old formality, thy firry wilderness, the haunt 
of the squirrel, and the day-long murmuring wood-pigeon, 
with that antique image in the centre, God or Goddess I 
wist not ; but child of Athens or old Borne paid never a 
sincerer worship to Pan or to Sylvanus in their native 5 
groves, than I to that fragmental mystery. 

Was it for this that I kissed my childish hands too 
fervently in your idol-worship, walks and windings of 
Blakesmoor ! for this, or what sin of mine, has the 
plough passed over your pleasant places ? I sometimes 10 
think that as men, when they die, do not die all, so of 
their extinguished habitations there may be a hope — a 
germ to be revivified. 



130 CHARLES LAMB, 



POOE KELATIONS. 



A Poor Eelation — is the most irrelevant thing in 
nature, — a piece of impertinent correspondency, — an 
odious approximation, — a haunting conscience, — a pre- 
posterous sliadow, lengthening in the noontide of our 

5 prosperity, — an unwelcome remembrancer, — a perpet- 
ually recurring mortification, a drain on your purse, a 
more intolerable dun upon your pride, — a drawback 
upon success, — a rebuke to your rising, — a stain in your 
blood, — a blot on your 'scutcheon, — a rent in your gar- 

10 ment, — a death's head at your banquet, — Agathocles's 
pot, — a Mordecai in your gate, a Lazarus at your door, 
a lion in your path, — a frog in your chamber, — a fly 
in your ointment, — a mote in your eye, — a triumph to 
your enemy, an apology to your friends, — the one 

15 thing not needful, — the hail in harvest, — the ounce of 
sour in a pound of sweet. 

He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth you 
" That is Mr. ." A rap, between familiarity and re- 
spect ; that demands, and at the same time seems ')to 

20 despair of, entertainment. He entereth smiling and — 
embarrassed. He holdeth out his hand to you to shake, 
and — draweth it back again. He casually looketh in 



ESSAYS OF ELI A. 131 

about dinner-time — when the table is fulL He offereth 
to go away, seeing you have company, — but is induced 
to stay. He filleth a chair, and your visitor's two chil- 
dren are accommodated at a side table. He never cometh 
upon open days, when your wife says with some com- 5 
placency, " My dear, perhaps Mr will drop in to- 
day." He remembereth birthdays, — and professeth he 
is fortunate to have stumbled upon one. He declareth 
against fish, the turbot being small — yet suffereth him- 
self to be importuned into a slice, against his first reso- 10 
lution. He sticketh by the port, — yet will be prevailed 
upon to empty the remainder glass of claret, if a stranger 
press it upon him. He is a puzzle to the servants, v/ho 
are fearful of being too obsequious, or not civil enough, 
to him. The guests think " they have seen him before." 15 
Every one speculateth upon his condition ; and the most 
part take him to be — a tidewaiter. He calleth you by 
your Christian name, to imply that his other is the same 
with your own. He is too familiar by half, yet you 
wish he had less diffidence. With half the familiarity, 20 
he might pass for a casual dependant ; with more bold- 
ness, he would be in no danger of being taken for what 
he is. He is too humble for a friend; yet taketh on 
him more state than befits a client. He is a worse guest 
than a country tenant, inasmuch 'as he bringeth up no 23 
rent — yet 'tis odds, from his garb and demeanor, that 
your guests take him for one. He is asked to make one 
at the whist-table ; refuseth on the score of poverty, and 
— resents being left out. When the company break up, 



132 CHARLES LAMB. 

he proffereth. to go for a coach — and lets the servant go. 
He recollects your grandfather ; and will thrust in some 
mean and quite unimportant anecdote « — of the family. 
He knew it when it was not quite so flourishing as " he 

5 is blest in seeing it now." He reviveth past situations, 
to institute what he calleth — favorable comparisons. 
With a reflecting sort of congratulation, he will inquire 
the price of your furniture ; and insults you with a spe- 
cial commendation of your window-curtains. He is of 

10 opinion that the urn is the more elegant shape, but after 
all, there was something more comfortable about the old 
tea-kettle, — which you must remember. He dare say 
you must find a great convenience in having a carriage 
of your own, and appealeth to your lady if it is not so. 

15 Inquireth if you have had your arms done on vellum 
yet ; and did not know, till lately, that such-and-such 
had been the crest of the family. His memory is unsea- 
sonable ; his compliments perverse ; his talk a trouble ; 
his stay pertinacious ; and when he goeth away, you 

20 dismiss his chair into a corner as precipitately as possi- 
ble, and feel fairly rid of two nuisances. 

There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is — a 
female Poor Relation. You may do something with the 
other ; you may pass him off tolerably well ; but your 

25 indigent she-relative is hopeless. " He is an old humor- 
ist," you may say, " and affects to go threadbare. His 
circumstances are better than folks would take them to 
be. You are fond of having a Character at your table, 
and truly he is one." But in the indications of female 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 133 

poverty there can be no disguise. No woman dresses 
below herself from caprice. The truth must out with- 
out shuffling. " She is plainly related to the L s ; 

or what does she at their house ? " She is, in all proba- 
bility, your wife's cousin. Nine times out of ten, at 5 
least, this is the case. Her garb is something between 
a gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the former evidently 
predominates. She is most provokingly humble, and 
ostentatiously sensible to her inferiority. He may re- 
quire to be repressed sometimes — aliquando sufflami- 10 
nandus erat — but there is no raising her. You send 
her soup at dinner, and she begs to be helped — after 

the gentlemen. Mr. requests the honor of taking 

wine with her; she hesitates beween Port and Madeira, 
and chooses the former — because he does. She calls 15 
the servant Sir, and insists on not troubling him to hold 
her plate. The housekeeper patronizes her. The chil- 
dren's governess takes upon her to correct her when she 
has mistaken the piano for the harpsichord. 

Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable instance 20 
of the disadvantages to which this chimerical notion of 
affinity constituting a clain% to acquaintance may subject 
the spirit of a gentleman. A little foolish blood is all 
that is betwixt him and a lady with a great estate. His 
stars are perpetually crossed by the malignant maternity 25 
of an old woman, who persists in calling him " her son 
Dick." But she has wherewithal in the end to recom- 
pense his indignities, and float him again upon the bril- 
liant surface, under which it had been her seeming 



134 CHABLES LAMB. 

business and pleasure all along to sink him. All men, 
besides, are not of Dick's temperament. I knew an 
Amlet in real life, who, wanting Dick's buoyancy, sank 
indeed. Poor W ■ ivas of my own standing at Christ's, 

5 a fine classic, and a youth of promise. If he had a blem- 
ish, it was too much pride ; but its quality was inoffen- 
sive ; it was not of that sort which hardens the heart, 
and serves to keep inferiors at a distance ; it only sought 
to ward off derogation from itself. It was the principle 

10 of self-respect carried as far as it could go without in- 
fringing upon that respect, which he would have every 
one else equally maintain for himself. He would have 
you to think alike with him on this topic. Many a 
quarrel have I had with him, when we were rather older 

15 boys, and our tallness made us more obnoxious to obser- 
vation in the blue clothes, because I would not thread 
the alleys and blind ways of the town with him to elude 
notice when we have been out together on a holiday 
in the streets of this sneering and prying metropolis. 

20 W- went, sore with these notions, to Oxford, where 

the dignity and sweetness of a scholar's life, meeting 
with the alloy of a humble introduction, wrought in him 
a passionate devotion to the place, with a profound aver- 
sion from the society. The servitor's gown (worse than 

25 his school array) clung to him with Nessian venom. He 
thought himself ridiculous in a garb under which Latimer 
must have walked erect, and in which Hooker, in his 
young days, possibly flaunted in a vein of no discom- 
mendable vanity. In the depth of college shades, or in 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 135 

his lonely cliamber, the jjoor student shrunk from obser- 
vation. He found shelter among books, which insult 
not; and studies, that ask no questions of a youth's 
finances. He was lord of his library, and seldom cared 
for looking out beyond his domains. The healing influ- 5 
ence of studious pursuits was upon him, to soothe and 
to abstract. He was almost a healthy man, when the 
waywardness of his fate broke out against him with 

a second and worse malignity. The father of W 

had hitherto exercised the humble profession of house- 10 

painter at N , near Oxford. A supposed interest 

with some of the heads of colleges had now induced 
him to take up his abode in that city, with the hope of 
being employed upon some public works which were 
talked of. From that moment I read in the counte- 15 
nance of the young man the determination which at 
length tore him from academical pursuits forever. To 
a person unacquainted with our universities, the dis- 
tance between the gownsmen and the townsmen, as they 
are called — the trading part of the latter especially — 20 
is carried to an excess that would appear harsh and in- 
credible. The temperament of W 's father was dia- 
metrically the reverse of his own. Old W was a 

little, busy, cringing tradesman, who, with his son upon 
his arm, would stand bowing and scraping, cap in hand, 25 
to anything that wore the semblance of a gown, — - in- 
sensible to the winks and opener remonstrances of the 
young man, to whose chamber-fellow, or equal in stand- 
ing, perhaps, he was thus obsequiously and gratuitously 



136 CHABLES LAMB. 

ducking. Such, a state of things could not last. W 

must change the air of Oxford, or be suffocated. He 
chose the former ; and let the sturdy moralist, who 
strains the point of the filial duties as high as they can 

5 bear, censure the dereliction ; he cannot estimate the 

struggle. I stood with W -, the last afternoon I 

ever saw him, under the eaves of his paternal dwelling. 
It was in the fine lane leading from the High-street to 
the back of college, where W kept his rooms. 

10 He seemed thoughtful and more reconciled. I ventured 
to rally him — finding him in a better mood — upon a 
representation of the Artist Evangelist, which the old 
man, whose affairs were beginning to flourish, had caused 
to be set up in a splendid sort of frame over his really 

15 handsome shop, either as a token of prosperity or badge 

of gratitude to his saints. W looked up at the 

Luke, and, like Satan, " knew his mounted sign — and 
fled." A letter on his father's table the next morning 
announced that he had accepted a commission in a regi- 

20 ment about to embark for Portugal. He was among the 
first who perished before the walls of St. Sebastian. 

I do not know how, upon a subject which I began by 
treating half seriously, I should have fallen upon a re- 
cital so eminently painful ; but this theme of poor rela- 

25 tionship is replete with so much matter for tragic as 
well as comic associations, that it is difficult to keep the 
account distinct without blending. The earliest im- 
pressions which I received on this matter are certainly 
not attended with anything painful or very humiliating 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 137 

in the recalling. At my father's table (no very splen- 
;did one) was to be found every Saturday the mysterious 
figure of an aged gentleman, clothed in neat black, of a 
sad yet comely appearance. His deportment was of the 
essence of gravity, his words few or none ; and I was 5 
not to make a noise in his presence. I had little incli- 
nation to have done so, for my cue w^as to admire in 
silence. A particular elbow-chair was appropriated to 
him, which was in no case to be violated. A peculiar 
sort of sweet pudding, which appeared on no other oc- lO 
casion, distinguished the days of his coming. I used to 
think him a prodigiously rich man. All I could make 
out of him was that he and my father had been school- 
fellows a world ago at Lincoln, and that he came from 
the Mint. The Mint I knew to be a place where all the 15 
money was coined — and I thought he was the owner 
of all that money. Awful ideas of the Tower twined 
themselves about his presence. He seemed above human 
infirmities and passions. A sort of melancholy grandeur 
invested him. From some inexplicable doom I fancied 20 
him obliged to go about in an eternal suit of mourning ; 
a captive, a stately being, let out of the Tower on Satur- 
days. Often have I w^ondered at the temerity of my 
father, who, in spite of an habitual general respect 
which we all in common manifested towards him, would 25 
venture now and then to stand up against him in some 
argument, touching their youthful days. The houses of 
the ancient city of Lincoln are divided, as most of my 
readers know, between the dwellers on the hill and in 



138 CHARLES LAMB. 

the valley. Tliis marked distinction formed an obvious 
division between the boys who lived above (however 
brought together in a common school) and the boys 
whose paternal residence was on the plain ; a sufficient 

5 cause of hostility in the code of these young Grotiuses. 
My father had been a leading Mountaineer, and would 
still maintain the general superiority, in skill and hardi- 
hood, of the Above Boys (his own faction) over the Be- 
low Boys (so were they called), of which party his 

10 contemporary had been a chieftain. Many and hot 
were the skirmishes on this topic — the only one upon 
which the old gentleman was ever brought out — and 
bad blood bred ; even sometimes almost to the recom- 
mencement (so I expected) of actual hostilities. But 

15 my father, who scorned to insist upon advantages, gen- 
erally contrived to turn the conversation upon some 
adroit by-commendation of the old Minster, in the gen- 
eral preference of which, before all other cathedrals in 
the island, the dweller on the hill, and the plain-born, 

20 could meet on a conciliating level, and lay down their 
less important differences. Once only I saw the old 
gentleman really ruffled, and I remembered with anguish 
the thought that came over me : ^'Perhaps he will never 
come here again." He had been pressed to take another 

25 plate of the viand, which I have already mentioned as 
the indispensable concomitant of his visits. He had re- 
fused with a resistance amounting to rigor, when my 
aunt, an old Lincolnian, but who had something of this, 
in common with my Cousin Bridget, that she would 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 139 

sometimes press civility out of season, uttered the fol- 
lowing memorable application : " Do take another slice, 
Mr. Billet, for you do not get pudding every day." 
The old gentleman said nothing at the time, but he took 
occasion in the course of the evening, when some argu- 5 
ment had intervened between them, to utter with an 
emphasis which chilled the company, and which chills 
me now as I write it : " Woman, you are superannu- 
ated ! " John Billet did not survive long after the di- 
gesting of this affront, but he survived long enough to 10 
assure me that peace was actually restored ; and if I re- 
member aright, another pudding was discreetly substi- 
tuted in the place of that which had occasioned the 
offence. He died at the Mint (anno 1781), where he 
had long held what he accounted a comfortable inde- is 
pendence ; and with five pounds, fourteen shillings, and 
a penny, which were found in his escritoire after his de- 
cease, left the world, blessing God that he had enough 
to bury him, and that he had never been obliged to any 
man for a sixpence. This was — a Poor Eelation. 20 



140 CHABLES LAMB. 



THE OLD MAEGATE HOY. 



I AM fond of passing my vacations (I believe I have 
said so before) at one or other of the Universities. 
Next to these my choice would fix me at some woody 
spot, such as the neighborhood of Henley affords in 

5 abundance, on the banks of my beloved Thames. But 
somehow or other my cousin contrives to wheedle me, 
once in three or four seasons to a watering-place. Old at- 
tachments cling to her in spite of experience. We have 
been dull at Worthing one summer, duller at Brighton 

10 another, dullest at Eastbonrn a th'ird, and are at this 
moment doing dreary penance at — Hastings! — and all 
because we were happy many years ago for a brief week 
at Margate. That was our first seaside experiment, and 
many circumstances combined to make it the most agree- 

15 able holiday of my life. We had neither of us seen the 
sea, and we had never been from home so long together 
in company. 

Can I forget thee, thou old Margate Hoy, with thy 
weather-beaten, sunburnt captain, and his rough accom- 

20 modations, — ill exchanged for the foppery and fresh- 
water niceness of the modern steam -packet ? To the 
winds and waves thou committedst thy goodly freightage, 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 141 

and didst ask no aid of magic fumes and spells and boiling 
caldrons. With the gales of heaven thou wentest swim- 
mingly ; or, Avhen it was their pleasure, stoodest still 
with sailor-like patience. Thy course was natural, not 
forced as in a hotbed ; nor didst thou go poisoning the 5 
breath of ocean with sulphureous smoke, a great sea 
chimera, chimneying and furnacing the deep; or liker to 
that fire-god parching up Scamander. 

Can I forget thy honest, yet slender crew, with their 
coy, reluctant responses (yet to the suppression of any- 10 
thing like contempt) to the raw questions, which we of 
the great city would be ever and anon putting to them, as 
to the uses of this or that strange naval implement ? 
'Specially can I forget thee, thou happy medium, thou 
shade of refuge between us and them, conciliating inter- 15 
preter of their skill to our simplicity, comfortable ambas- 
sador between sea and land ! — whose sailor trousers did 
not more convincingly assure thee to be an adopted den- 
izen of the former, than thy white cap, and whiter apron 
over them, with thy neat-fingered practice in thy cul- 20 
inary vocation, bespoke thee to have been of inland nur- 
ture heretofore — - a master cook of Eastcheap ? How 
busily didst thou ply thy multifarious occupation, cook, 
mariner, attendant, chamberlain ; here, there, like an- 
other Ariel, flaming at once about all parts of the deck, 25 
yet with kindlier ministrations, — not to assist the tem- 
pest but, as if touched with a kindred sense of our in- 
firmities, to soothe the qualms which that untried motion 
might haply raise in our crude land fancies. And when 



142 CHABLES LAMB. 

the o^erwashing billows drove us below deck (for it was 
far gone in October, and we had stiff and blowing 
weather), how did thy officious minister in gs, still cater- 
ing for our comfort, with cards, and cordials and thy 

5 more cordial conversation, alleviate the closeness and 
the confinement of thy else (truth to say) not very sa- 
vory, nor very inviting, little cabin ? 

With these additaments to boot, we had on board a 
fellow-passenger whose discourse in verity might have 

10 beguiled a longer voyage than we meditated, and have 
made mirth and wonder abound as far as the Azores. 
He was a dark, Spanish-complexioned young man, re- 
markably handsome, with an officer-like assurance, and 
an insuppressible volubility of assertion. He Avas, in 

15 fact, the greatest liar I had met with then, or since. 
He was none of your hesitating, half story-tellers (a 
most painful description of mortals) who go on sound- 
ing your belief, and only giving you as much as they 
see you can swallow at a time, — the nibbling pick- 

20 pockets of your patience, — but one who committed 
downright, daylight depredations upon his neighbor's 
faith. He did not stand shivering upon the brink, but 
was a hearty, thorough-paced liar, and plunged at once 
into the depths of your credulity. I partly believe, he 

25 made pretty sure of his company. Not many rich, not 
many wise or learned, composed at that time the com- 
mon stowage of a Margate packet. We were, I am 
afraid, a set of as unseasoned Londoners (let our ene- 
mies give it a worse name) as Aldermanbury or Wat- 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 143 

ling Street at that time of day could have supplied. 
There might be an exception or two among us, but I 
scorn to make any invidious distinctions among such 
a jolly, companionable ship's company as those were 
whom I sailed with. Something too must be conceded 5 
to the Genius Loci. Had the confident fellow told us 
half the legends on land which he favored us with 
on the other element, I flatter myself the good sense 
of most of us would have revolted. But we w^ere in 
a new world, with everything unfamiliar about us, and 10 
the time and place disposed us to the reception of any 
prodigious marvel whatsoever. Time has obliterated 
from my memory much of his wild fablings ; and the 
rest would appear but dull, as written, and to be read 
on shore. He had been aide-de-camp (among other rare 15 
accidents and fortunes) to a Persian Prince, and at one 
blow had stricken off the head of the King of Carima- 
nia on horseback. He, of course, married the Prince's 
daughter. I forget what unlucky turn in the politics of 
that court, combining with the loss of his consort, was the 20 
reason of his quitting Persia ; but, with the rapidity of 
a magician, he transported himself, along with his hear- 
ers, back to England, w^here we still found him in the 
confidence of great ladies. There was some story of a 
princess — Elizabeth, if I remember — having intrusted 25 
to his care an extraordinary casket of jewels, upon some 
extraordinary occasion, — but, as I am not certain of the 
name or circumstance at this distance of time, I must 
leave it to the Eoyal daughters of England to settle the 



144 CHABLES LAMB. 

honor among themselves in private. I cannot call to 
mind half his pleasant wonders ; but I perfectly remem- 
ber, that in the course of his travels he had seen a 
phoenix ; and he obligingly undeceived us of the vulgar 

5 error, that there is but one of that species at a time, 
assuring us that they were not uncommon in some parts 
of Upper Egypt. Hitherto he had found the most im- 
plicit listeners. His dreaming fancies had transported 
us beyond the " ignorant present." But when (still 

10 hardying more and more in his triumphs over our sim- 
plicity) he went on to affirm that he had actually sailed 
through the legs of the Colossus at Ehodes, it really be- 
came necessary to make a stand. And here I must do 
justice to the good sense and intrepidity of one of our 

15 party, a youth, that had hitherto been one of his most 
deferential auditors, who, from his recent reading, made 
bold to assure the gentleman that there must be some 
mistake, as " the Colossus in question had been de- 
stroyed long since ; " to whose opinion, delivered with 

20 all modesty, our hero was obliging enough to concede 
thus much, that " the figure was indeed a little damaged." 
This was the only opposition he met with, and it did not 
at all seem to stagger him, for he proceeded with his 
fables, which the same youth appeared to swallow with 

25 still more complacency than ever, confirmed, as it were, 
by the extreme candor of that concession. With these 
prodigies he wheedled us on till we came in sight of the 
Reculvers, which one of our own company (having been 
the voyage before) immediately recognizing, and point- 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 145 

ing out to us, was considered by us as no ordinary 
seaman. 

All this time sat upon the edge of the deck quite a 
different character. It was a lad, apparently very poor, 
very infirm, and very patient. His eye was ever on the 5 
sea, with a smile ; and, if he caught now and then some 
snatches of these wild legends, it was by accident, and 
they seemed not to concern him. The waves to him 
whispered more pleasant stories. He was as one, being 
with us, but not of us. He heard the bell of dinner ring 10 
without stirring ; and when some of us pulled out our 
private stores, — our cold meat and our salads, — he pro- 
duced none, and seemed to want none. Only a solitary 
biscuit he had laid in ; provision for the one or two days 
and nights to which these vessels then were oftentimes 15 
obliged to prolong their voyage. Upon a nearer ac- 
quaintance with him, which he seemed neither to court 
nor decline, we learned that he was going to Margate, 
with the hope of being admitted into the Infirmary there 
for sea-bathing. His disease was a scrofula, which ap- 20 
peared to have eaten all over him. He expressed great 
hopes of a cure ; and when we asked him whether he had 
any friends where he was going, he replied '^ he had no 
friends." 

These pleasant, and some mournful passages with the 25 
first sight of the sea, co-operating with youth, and a 
sense of holidays, and out-of-door adventure, to me that 
had been pent up in populous cities for many months 
before, — have left upon my mind the fragrance as of 



146 CHABLES LAMB. 

summer days gone by, bequeatliing nothing but their 
remembrance for cold and wintry hours to chew upon. 
Will it be thought a digression (it may spare some 
unwelcome comparisons) if I endeavor to account for the 

5 dissatisfaction which I have heard so many persons 
confess to have felt (as I did myself feel in part on this 
occasion) at the sight of the sea for the first time ? I 
think the reason usually given — referring to the inca- 
pacity of actual objects for satisfying our preconcep- 

10 tions of them — scarcely goes deep enough into the 
question. Let the same person see a lion, an elephant, 
a mountain, for the first time in his life, and he shall 
perhaps feel himself a little mortified. The things do 
not fill up that space, which the idea of them seemed 

15 to take up in his mind. But they have still a corre- 
spondency to his first notion, and in time grow up to it, 
so as to produce a very similar impression ; enlarging 
themselves (if I may say so) upon familiarity. But the 
sea remains a disappointment. Is it not that in the lat- 

20 te7^ we had expected to behold (absurdly, I grant, but I 
am afraid, by the law of imagination, unavoidably) not 
a definite object, as those wild beasts, or that mountain 
compassable by the eye, but all the sea at once, the 

COMMENSURATE AlSTTAGONIST OF THE EARTH ? I do UOt 

25 say we tell ourselves so much, but the craving of the 
mind is to be satisfied with nothing less. I will sup- 
pose the case of a young person of fifteen (as I then 
was) knowing nothing of the sea but from description. 
He comes to it for the first time, — all that he has been 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 147 

reading of it all Ms life, and that the most enthusias- 
tic part of life, — all lie has gathered from narratives 
of wandering seamen, — what he has gained from true 
voyages, and what he cherishes as credulously from 
romance and poetry — crowding their images, and exact- 5 
ing strange tributes from expectation. He thinks of 
the great deep, and of those who go down into it ; of its 
thousand isles, and of the vast continents it washes ; of 
its receiving the mighty Plata, or Orellana, into its 
bosom, without disturbance, or sense of augmentation ; lo 
of Biscay swells, and the mariner, 

"For many a day, and many a dreadful night, 
Incessant laboring round the stormy Cape;" 

of fatal rocks, and the " still-vexed Bermoothes ; " of 
great whirlpools, and the water-spout ; of sunken ships, 15 
and sumless treasures swallowed up in the unrestoring 
depths ; of fishes and quaint monsters, to which all that 
is terrible on earth 

" Be but as buggs to frighten babes withal, 
Compared with the creatures in the sea's entral; " 20 

of naked savages, and Juan Fernandez; of pearls and 
shells ; of coral beds, and of enchanted isles ; of mer- 
maids' grots — 

I do not assert that in sober earnest he expects to be 
shown all these wonders at once, but he is under the 25 
tyranny of a mighty faculty which haunts him with 
confused hints and shadows of all these ; and when the 



148 CHARLES LAMB. 

actual object opens first upon him, seen (in tame 
weather too, most likely) from our unromantic coasts, 
— a speck, a slip of sea-water, as it shows to him, — 
what can it prove but a very unsatisfying and even di- 

5 minutive entertainment ? Or if he has come to it from 
the mouth of the river, was it much more than the river 
widening ? and, even out of sight of land, what had he 
but a flat watery horizon about him, nothing compa- 
rable to the vast o'er-curtaining sky, his familiar object, 

10 seen daily without dread or amazement ? Who, in simi- 
lar circumstances, has not been tempted to exclaim with 
Charoba, in the poem of Gebir, 

Is this the mighty ocean? is this all? 

I love town, or country ; but this detestable Cinque 
15 Port is neither. I hate these scrubbed shoots, thrusting 
out their starved foliage from between the horrid fis- 
sures of dusty innutritions rocks, which the amateur calls 
" verdure to the edge of the sea." I require woods, and 
they show me stunted coppices. I cry out for the water- 
20 brooks, and pant for fresh streams, and inland murmurs. 
I cannot stand all day on the naked beach, watching the 
capricious hues of the sea, shifting like the colors of a 
dying mullet. I am tired of looking out at the windows 
of this island-prison. I would fain retire into the inte- 
25 rior of my cage. While I gaze upon the sea, I want to 
be on it, over it, across it. It binds me in with chains, 
as of iron. My thoughts are abroad. I should not so 
feel in Staffordshire. There is no home for me here. 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 149 

There is no sense of home at Hastings. It is a place 
of fugitive resort, an heterogeneous assemblage of sea- 
mews and stockbrokers, Amphitrites of the town, and 
misses that coquet with the Ocean. If it were what it 
was in its primitive shape, and what it ought to have 5 
remained, a fair, honest fishing-town, and no more, it 
were something; — with a few straggling fishermen's 
huts scattered about, artless as its cliffs, and with their 
materials filched from them, it were something. I could 
abide to dwell with Meshech ; to assort w^ith fisher- 10 
swains, and smugglers. There are, or I dream there are, 
many of this latter occupation here. Their faces become 
the place. I like a smuggler. He is the only honest 
thief. He robs nothing but the revenue, — an abstrac- 
tion I never greatly cared about. I could go out with 15 
them in their mackerel boats, or about their less osten- 
sible business, with some satisfaction. I can even toler- 
ate those poor victims to monotony, who from day to 
day pace along the beach, in endless progress and recur- 
rence, to watch their illicit countrymen, — townsfolk or 20 
brethren perchance, — whistling to the sheathing or un- 
sheathing of their cutlasses (their only solace), who, 
under the mild name of preventive service, keep up a 
legitimated civil warfare in the deplorable absence of 
a foreign one, to show their detestation of run hollands, 25 
and zeal for Old England. But it is the visitants from 
town that come here to say that they have been here, 
with no more relish of the sea than a pond-perch or a 
dace might be supposed to have, that are my aversion. 



150 



CHABLES LAMB. 



I feel like a foolish dace in these regions, and have as 
little toleration for myself here as for them. What can 
they want here ? If they had a true relish of the ocean, 
why have they brought all this land luggage with them ? 

5 or why pitch their civilized tents in the desert ? What 
mean these scanty book-rooms — marine libraries as they 
entitle them — if the sea were, as they would have us 
believe, a book '^ to read strange matter in " ? what 
are their foolish concert-rooms, if they come, as they 

10 would fain be thought to do, to listen to the music of 
the waves ? All is false and hollow pretension. They 
come, because it is the fashion, and to spoil the nature 
of the place. They are, mostly, as I have said, stock- 
brokers ; but I have watched the better sort of them, — 

15 now and then an honest citizen (of the old stamp), in 
the simplicity of his heart, shall bring down his wife 
and daughters, to taste the sea breezes. I always know 
the date of their arrival. It is easy to see it in their 
countenances. A day or two they go wandering on the 

20 shingles, picking up cockle-shells, and thinking them 
great things ; but, in a poor week, imagination slackens : 
they begin to discover that cockles produce no pearls, 
and then — then ! — if I could interpret for the pretty 
creatures (I know they have not the courage to confess 

25 it themselves), how gladly would they exchange their 
seaside rambles for a Sunday-walk on the greensward 
of their accustomed Twickenham meadows ! 

I would ask of one of these sea-charmed emigrants, 
who think they truly love the sea, with its wild usages, 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 151 

what would their feelings be if some of the unsophis- 
ticated aborigines of this place, encouraged by their 
courteous questionings here should venture, on the faith 
of such assured sympathy between them, to return the 
visit, and come up to see — London. I must imagine 5 
them with their fishing-tackle on their back, as we carry 
our town necessaries. What a sensation would it cause 
in Lothbury. What vehement laughter would it not 
excite among 

"The daughters of Cheapside, and wives of Lombard Street!" 10 

I am sure that no town-bred or inland-born subjects 
can feel their true and natural nourishment at these sea- 
places. Nature, where she does not mean us for mar- 
iners and vagabonds, bids us stay at home. The salt 
foam seems to nourish a spleen. I am not half so good- 15 
natured as by the milder waters of my natural river. 
I would exchange these sea-gulls for swans, and scud 
a swallow forever about the banks of Thamesis. 



152 CHARLES LAMB. 



THE CONVALESCENT. 



A PRETTY severe fit of indisposition which, under the 
name of a nervous fever, has made a prisoner of me for 
some weeks past, and is but slowly leaving me, has re- 
duced me to an incapacity of reflecting upon any topic 

5 foreign to itself. Expect no healthy conclusions from 
me this month, reader ; I can offer you only sick men's 
dreams. 

And truly the whole state of sickness is such; for 
what else is it but a magnificent dream for a man to 

10 lie a-bed, and draw daylight curtains about him ; and, 
shutting out the sun, to induce a total oblivion of all the 
works which are going on under it ? To become in- 
sensible to all the operations of life, except the beatings 
of one feeble pulse ? 

15 If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick-bed. How the 
patient lords it there ; what caprices he acts without 
control ! how kinglike he sways his pillow — tumbling, 
and tossing, and shifting, and lowering, and thumping, 
and flatting and moulding it, to the ever-varying requisi- 

20 tions of his throbbing temples. 

He changes sides oftener than a politician. Now he 
lies full length, then half length, obliquely, transversely, 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 153 

head and feet quite across the bed 5 and none accuses 
him of tergiversation. Within the four curtains he is 
absolute. They are his Mare Clausum. 

How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self 
to himself ! He is his own exclusive object. Supreme 5 
selfishness is inculcated upon him as his only duty. 'Tis 
the Two Tables of the Law to him. He has nothing to 
think of but how to get well. What passes out-of-doors, 
or within them, so he hear not the jarring of them, 
affects him not. 10 

A little while ago he was greatly concerned in the 
event of a lawsuit, which was to be the making or the 
marring of his dearest friend. He was to be seen trudg- 
ing about upon this man's errand to fifty quarters of 
the town at once, jogging this witness, refreshing that 15 
solicitor. The cause was to come on yesterday. He is 
absolutely as indifferent to the decision, as if it were a 
question to be tried at Pekin. Peradventure from some 
whispering, going on about the house, not intended for 
his hearing, he picks up enough to make him under- 20 
stand, that things went cross-grained in the Court yester- 
day, and his friend is ruined. But the word " friend," 
and the word " ruin," disturb him no more than so much 
jargon. He is not to think of anything but how to get 
better. 25 

What a world of foreign cares are merged in that 
absorbing consideration ! 

He has put on the strong armor of sickness, he is 
wrapped in the callous hide of suffering 5 he keeps his 



154 CHABLES LAMB. 

sympathy, like some curious vintage, under trusty lock 
and key, for his own use only. 

He lies pitying himself, honing and moaning to him- 
self ! He yearneth over himself ; his bowels are even 

5 melted within him to think what he suffers 5 he is not 
ashamed to weep over himself. 

He is forever plotting how to do some good to him- 
self ; studying little stratagems and artificial allevia- 
tions. 

10 He makes the most of himself ; dividing himself, by 
an allowable fiction, into as many distinct individuals, as 
he hath sore and sorrowing members. Sometimes he 
meditates — as of a thing apart from him — upon his 
poor aching head, and that dull pain wdiich, dozing or 

15 waking, lay in it all the past night like a log, or palpa- 
ble substance of pain, not to be removed without open- 
ing the very skull, as it seemed, to take it thence. Or 
he pities his long, clammy, attenuated fingers. He com- 
passionates himself all over ; and his bed is a very disci- 

20 pline of humanity, and tender heart. 

He is his owm sympathizer ; and instinctively feels 
that none can so well perform that office for him. He 
cares for few spectators to his tragedy. Only that 
punctual face of the old nurse pleases him, that an- 

25 nounces his broths and his cordials. He likes it because 
it is so unmoved, and because he can pour forth his fe- 
verish ejaculation before it as unreservedly as to his 
bed-post. 

To the world's business he is dead. He understands 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 155 

not what the callings and occupations of mortals are ; 
only he has a glimmering conceit of some such thing, 
when the doctor makes his daily call ; and even in the 
lines on that busy face he reads no multiplicity of pa- 
tients, but solely conceives of himself as the sick man. 5 
To what other uneasy couch the good man is hastening, 
when he slips out of his chamber, folding up his thin 
douceur so carefully, for fear of rustling — is no specula- 
tion which he can at present entertain. He thinks only 
of the regular return of the same phenomenon at the lo 
same hour to-morrow. 

Household rumors touch him not. Some faint mur- 
mur, indicative of life going on within the house, soothes 
him, while he knows not distinctly what it is. He is 
not to know anything, not to think of anything. Ser- 15 
vants gliding up or down the distant staircase, treading 
as upon velvet, gently keep his ear awake so long as he 
troubles not himself further than with some feeble guess 
at their errands. Exacter knowledge would be a burden 
to him ; he can just endure the pressure of conjecture. 20 
He opens his eye faintly at the dull stroke of the muffled 
knocker, and closes it again without asking ^^ Who was 
it ? " He is flattered by a general notion that inquiries 
are making after him, but he cares not to know the name 
of the inquirer. In the general stillness, and aw^ful hush 25 
of the house, he lies in state, and feels his sovereignty. 

To be sick is to enjoy monarchial prerogatives. Com- 
pare the silent tread, and quiet ministry, almost by the 
eye only with which he is served — with the careless 



156 CHARLES LAMB. 

demeanor, the unceremouious goings in and out (slapping 
of doors, or leaving them open) of the very same atten- 
dants, when he is getting a little better — and you will 
confess, that from the bed of sickness (throne let me 

5 rather call it) to the elbow-chair of convalescence, is a 
fall from dignity, amounting to a deposition. 

How convalescence shrinks a man back to his pristine 
stature ! where is now the space, which he occupied so 
lately, in his own, in the family's eye ? 

10 The scene of his regalities, his sick-room, which was 
his presence chamber, where he lay and acted his des- 
potic fancies — how is it reduced to a common bed-room ! 
The trimness of the very bed has something petty and 
unmeaning about it. It is made every day. How un- 

15 like to that wavy, many-furrowed, oceanic surface, which 
it presented so short a time since, when to make it was 
a service not to be thought of at oftener than three or 
four day revolutions, when the patient was with pain and 
grief to be lifted for a little while out of it, to submit to 

20 the encroachments of unwelcome neatness, and decencies 
which his shaken frame deprecated ; then to be lifted 
into it again, for another three or four days' respite, to 
flounder it out of shape again, while every fresh furrow 
was an historical record of some shifting posture, some 

25 uneasy turning, some seeking for a little ease ; and the 
shrunken skin scarce told a truer story than the crumpled 
coverlid. 

Hushed are those mysterious sighs — those groans — 
so much more awful, while we knew not from what cav- 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 157 

erns of vast hidden suffering tliey proceeded. The Ler- 
nean pangs are quenched. The riddle of sickness is 
solved ; and Philoctetes is become an ordinary personage. 

Perhaps some relic of the sick man's dream of great- 
ness survives in the still lingering visitations of the 5 
medical attendant. But how is he, too, changed with 
everything else ! Can this be he — this man of news — 
of chat — of anecdote — of everything but physic, — can 
this be he, who so lately came between the patient and 
his cruel enemy, as on some solemn embassy from Na- 10 
ture, erecting herself into a high mediating party ? 
— Pshaw ! 'tis some old woman. 

Farewell with him all that made sickness pompous — 
the spell that hushed the household — the desert-like 
stillness, felt throughout its inmost chambers — the mute 15 
attendance — the inquiry by looks — the still softer 
delicacies of self-attention — the sole and single eye of 
distemper alonely fixed upon itself — world-thoughts 
excluded — -the man a world unto himself — his own 
theatre, — 20 

" What a speck is he dwindled into ! " 

In this flat swamp of convalescence, left by the ebb 
of sickness, yet far enough from the terra firma of es- 
tablished health, your note, dear Editor, reached me, 
requesting — an article. In Articulo Mortis, thought I ; 25 
but it is something hard, — and the quibble, wretched 
as it was, relieved me. The summons, unseasonable as 
it appeared, seemed to link me on again to the petty 



158 CHARLES LAMB, 

businesses of life, which I had lost sight of; a gentle 
call, to activity, however trivial ; a wholesome weaning 
from that preposterous dream of self-absorption — the 
puffy state of sickness — in which I confess to have lain 

5 so long, insensible to the magazines and monarchies, of 
the world alike ; to its laws, and to its literature. The 
hypochondriac flatus is subsiding ; the acres, which in 
imagination I had spread over — for the sick man swells 
in the sole contemplation of his single sufferings, till he 

10 becomes a Tityus to himself — are wasting to a span ; 
and for the giant of self-importance, which I was so 
lately, you have me once again in my natural pretensions 
— the lean and meagre figure of your insignificant 
Essayist. 



ESSAYS OF ELI A. 159 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 



Sera tamen respexit 
Libertas. 

VlRGIIi. 

A Clerk I was in London gay. 

O'Keefb. 

If peradventure, Eeader, it has been thy lot to waste 
the golden years of thy life — thy shining youth — in 5 
the irksome confinement of an office ; to have thy prison- 
days prolonged through middle age down to decrepitude 
and silver hairs, without hope of release or respite ; to 
have lived to forget that there are such things as holi- 
days, or to remember them but as the prerogatives of 10 
childhood ; then, and then only, will you be able to ap- 
preciate my deliverance. 

It is now six-and-thirty years since I took my seat at 
the desk in Mincing Lane. Melancholy was the transi- 
tion at fourteen from the abundant playtime, and the 15 
frequently intervening vacations of school days, to the 
eight, nine, and sometimes ten hours' a-day attendance 
at the counting-house. But time partially reconciles us 
to anything. I gradually became content — doggedly 
content, as wild animals in cages. 20 



160 CHABLES LAMB. 

It is true I had my Sundays to myself ; but Sundays, 
admirable as the institution of them is for purposes of 
worship, are for that very reason the very worst adapted 
for dsijs of unbending and recreation. In particular, 

5 there is a gloom for me attendant upon a city Sunday, a 
weight in the air. I miss the cheerful cries of London, 
the music, and the ballad -singers, -^— the buzz and stir- 
ring murmur of the streets. Those eternal bells depress 
me. The closed shops repel me. Prints, pictures, all 

10 the glittering and endless succession of knacks and gew- 
gaws, and ostentatiously displayed wares of tradesmen, 
which make a week-day saunter through the less busy 
parts of the metropolis so delightful — are shut out. No 
book-stalls deliciously to idle over — no busy faces to 

15 recreate the idle man who contemplates them ever pass- 
ing by — the very face of business a charm by contrast 
to his temporary relaxation from it. Nothing to be seen 
but unhappy countenances — or half-happy at best — of 
emancipated 'prentices and little tradesfolks, with here 

20 and there a servant-maid that has got leave to go out, 
who, slaving all the week, with the habit has lost al- 
most the capacity of enjoying a free hour ; and livelily 
expressing the hollowness of a day's pleasuring. The 
very strollers in the fields on that day look anything but 

25 comfortable. 

But besides Sundays I had a day at Easter, and a day 
at Christmas, with a full week in the summer to go and 
air myself in my native fields of Hertfordshire. This 
last was a great indulgence; and the prospect of its 



ESSAYS OF ELI A. 161 

recurrence, I believe, alone kept me up through the year, 
and made my durance tolerable. But when the week 
came round, did the glittering phantom of the distance 
keep touch with me ? or rather was it not a series of 
seven uneasy days, spent in restless pursuit of pleasure, 5 
and a wearisome anxiety to find out how to make the 
most of them ? Where was the quiet, where the prom- 
ised rest ? Before I had a taste of it, it was vanished. 
I was at the desk again, counting upon the fifty-one 
tedious weeks that must intervene before such another 10 
snatch would come. Still the prospect of its coming 
threw something of an illumination upon the darker side 
of my captivity. Without it, as I have said, I could 
scarcely have sustained my thraldom. 

Independently of the rigors of attendance, I have ever 15 
been haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) of 
incapacity for business. This, during my latter years, 
had increased to such a degree, that it was visible in all 
the lines of my countenance. My health and my good 
spirits flagged. I had perpetually a dread of some 20 
crisis, to w^iich I should be found unequal. Besides my 
daylight servitude, I served over again all night in my 
sleep, and would awake with terrors of imaginary false 
entries, errors in my accounts, and the like. I was fifty 
years of age, and no prospect of emancipation presented 25 
itself. I had grown to my desk, as it were ; and the 
wood had entered into my soul. 

My fellows in the office would sometimes rally me 
upon the trouble legible in my countenance ; but I did 



162 CHARLES LAMB. 

not know that it had raised the suspicions of any of my 
employers, when, on the fifth of last month, a day ever 

to be remembered by me, L -^ , the junior partner in 

the firm, calling me on one side, directly taxed me with 

5 my bad looks, and frankly inquired the cause of them. 
So taxed, I honestly made confession of my infirm.ity, 
and added that I was afraid I should eventually be 
obliged to resign his service. He spoke some words of 
course to hearten me, and there the matter rested. A 

10 whole week I remained laboring under the impression 
that I had acted imprudently in my disclosure ; that I 
had foolishly given a handle against myself, and had 
been anticipating my own dismissal. A week passed in 
this manner, the most anxious one, I verily believe, in 

15 my Avhole life, when, on the evening of the 12th of 
April, just as I was about quitting my desk to go home, 
(it might be about eight o'clock,) I received an awful 
summons to attend the presence of the whole assembled 
firm in the formidable back parlor. I thought now my 

20 time is surely come, I have done for myself, I am going 
to be told that they have no longer occasion for me. 

L , I could see, smiled at the terror I was in, which 

was a little relief to me, — when to my utter astonish- 
ment B , the eldest partner, began a formal harangue 

25 to me on the length of my services, my very meritorious 
conduct during the whole of the time, (the deuse, thought 
I, how did he find out that ? I protest I uever had the 
confidence to think as much). He went on to descant 
on the expediency of retiring at a certain time of life, 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 163 

(how my heart panted ! ) and asking me a few questions 
as to the amount of my own property, of which I have 
a little, ended with a proposal, to which his three part- 
ners nodded a grave assent, that I should accept from 
the house, which I had served so well, a pension for life 5 
to the amount of two-thirds of my accustomed salary — 
a magnificent offer ! I do not know what I answered 
between surprise and gratitude, but it was understood 
that I accepted their proposal, and I was told that I was 
free from that hour to leave their service. I stammered 10 
out a bow, and at just ten minutes after eight I went 
home — forever. This noble benefit — gratitude forbids 
me to conceal their names — I owe to the kindness of the 
most munificent firm in the world — the house of Bol- 
dero, Merryweather, Bosanquet, and Lacy. 15 

Esto perpetua ! 

For the first day or two I felt stunned, overwhelmed. 
I could only apprehend my felicity ; I was too confused 
to taste it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking I was 
happy, and knowing that I was not. I was in the con- 20 
dition of a prisoner in the old Bastile, suddenly let loose 
after a forty years' confinement. I could scarce trust 
myself with myself. It was like passing out of Time 
into Eternity, — for it is a sort of Eternity for a man to 
have his Time all to himself. It seemed to me that I 25 
had more time on my hands than I could ever manage. 
Erom a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted 
up into a vast revenue ; I could see no end of my pos- 



164 CHARLES LAMB. 

sessions; I wanted some steward, or judicious bailiff, 
to manage mj estates iii Time for me. And liere let me 
caution persons grown old in active business, not lightly, 
nor without weighing their own resources, to forego 

5 their customary employment all at once, for there may 
be danger in it. I feel it by myself, but I know that 
my resources are sufficient ; and now that those first 
giddy raptures have subsided, I have a quiet home-feel- 
ing of the blessedness of my condition. I am in no 

10 hurry. Having all holidays, I am as though I had none. 
If time hung heavy upon me, I could w^alk it away ; but 
I do not walk all day long, as I used to do in those old 
transient holidays, thirty miles a day, to make the most 
of them. If Time were troublesome, I could read it 

15 away ; but I do not read in that violent measure with 
which, having no time my own but candle-light Time, 
I used to weary out my head and eyesight in bygone 
winters. I walk, read, or scribble (as now) just when 
the lit seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure ; I let 

20 it come to me. I am like the man 

" that's born, and has his jeavs come to him, 
In some green desert." 

" Years ! " you will say ; " what is this superannuated 
simpleton calculating upon ? He has already told us 
25 he is past fifty." 

I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct 
out of them the hours which I have lived to other peo- 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 165 

pie, and not to myself, and you will find me still a young 
fellow. T'or that is the only true Time wliich a man can 
properly call his own, that which he has all to himself ; 
the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live 
it, is other people's Time, not his. The remnant of my 5 
poor days, long or short, is at least multiplied for me 
threefold. My ten next years, if I stretch so far, will 
be as long as any preceding thirty. 'Tis a fair rule-of- 
three sum. 

Among the strange fantasies which beset me at the 10 
commencement of my freedom, and of which all traces 
are not yet gone, one was, that a vast tract of time had 
intervened since I quitted the Counting-House. I could 
not conceive of it as an affair of yesterday. The part- 
ners, and the clerks with whom I had for so many years, 15 
and for so many hours in each day of the year, been 
closely associated, —being suddenly removed from them, 
— they seemed as dead to me. There is a fine passage, 
which may serve to illustrate this fancy, in a Tragedy 
by Sir Robert Howard, speaking of a friend's death. 20 

"'Twas Uit just now he went away; 
I have not since had time to shed a tear; 
And yet the distance does the same appear 
As if he had been a thousand years from me. 
Time takes no measure in Eternity." 25 

To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been fain 
to go among them once or twice since ; to visit my old 
desk-fellows, — my co-brethren of the quill, — that I had 
left below in the state militant. Not all the kindness 



166 CHARLES LAMB. 

with whicli they received me could quite restore to me 
that pleasant familiarity, which I had heretofore enjoyed 
among them. We cracked some of our old jokes, but 
methought they went off but faintly. My old desk, the 

5 peg where I hung my hat, were appropriated to another. 
I knew it must be, but I could not take it kindly. 

D 1 take me, if I did not feel some remorse — beast, 

if I had not - ■ at quitting my old compeers, the faith- 
ful partners of my toils for six-and-thirty years, that 

10 smoothed for me with their jokes and conundrums the 
ruggedness of my professional road. Had it been so 
rugged then, after all ? or was I a coward simply ? 
Well, it is too late to repent ; and I also know that these 
suggestions are a common fallacy of the mind on such 

15 occasions. But my heart smote me. I had violently 
broken the bands betwixt us. It was at least not cour- 
teous. I shall be some time before I get quite reconciled 
to the separation. Farewell, old cronies, yet not for long, 
for again and again I will come among ye, if I shall 

20 have your leave. Farewell, Ch , dry, sarcastic, and 

friendly ! Do , mild, slow to move, and gentlemanly ! 

PI , officious to do, and to volunteer, good services ! 

— and thou, thou dreary pile, fit mansion for a Gresham, 
or a Whittington of old, stately house of Merchants ; 

25 with thy labyrinthine passages, and light-excluding, pent- 
up offices, where candles for one-half the year supplied 
the place of the sun's light ; unhealthy contributor to 
my weal, stern fosterer of my living farewell ! In thee 
remain, and not in the obscure collection of some wan- 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 167 

dering bookseller, my " works ! " There let them rest, 
as I do from my labors, piled on thy massy shelves, 
more MSS. in folio than ever Aquinas left, and full as 
useful ! My mantle I bequeath among ye. 

A fortnight has passed since the date of my first com- 5 
munication. At that period I was approaching to tran- 
quillity, but had not reached it. I boasted of a calm 
indeed, but it was comparative only. Something of the 
first flutter was left ; an unsettling sense of novelty ; 
the dazzling to weak eyes of unaccustomed light. I lo 
missed my old chains, forsooth, as if they had been some 
necessary part of my apparell. I was a poor Carthusian, 
from strict cellular discipline suddenly by some revolu- 
tion returned upon the world. I am now as if I had 
never been other than my own master. It is natural to 15 
me to go where I please, to do what I please. I find 
myself at eleven o'clock in the day in Bond Street, and 
it seems to me that I have been sauntering there at that 
very hour for years past. I digress into Soho, to explore 
a bookstall. Methinks I have been thirty years a col- 20 
lector. There is nothing strange nor new in it. I find 
myself before a fine picture in the morning. Was it 
ever otherwise ? What is become of Fish Street Hill ? 
Where is Eenchurch Street ? Stones of old Mincing 
Lane, which I have worn with my daily pilgrimage for 25 
six-and-thirty years, to the footsteps of what toil-worn 
clerk are your everlasting flints now vocal ? I indent 
the gayer flags of Pall Mall. It is 'Change time, and 
I am strangely among the Elgin marbles. It was no 



168 CHABLES LAMB. 

hyperbole when I ventured to compare the change in my 
condition to a passing into another world. Time stands 
still in a manner to me. I have lost all distinction of 
season. I do not know the day of the week or of the 

5 month. Each day used to be individually felt by me in 
its reference to the foreign postdays ; in its distance 
from, or propinquity to, the next Sunday. I had my 
Wednesday feelings, my Saturday nights' sensations. 
The genius of each day was upon me distinctly during 

10 the whole of it, affecting my appetite, spirits, etc. The 
phantom of the next day, with the dreary five to follow, 
sat as a load upon my poor Sabbath recreations. What 
charm has Avashed that Ethiop wddte ? What is gone 
of Black Monday ? All days are the same. Sunday it- 

15 self, — that unfortunate failure of a holiday, as it too 
often proved, what with my sense of its fagitiveness, 
and overcare to get the greatest quantity of pleasure out 
of it, — is melted down into a weekdaj^ I can spare to 
go to church now, without grudging the huge cantle 

20 which it used to seem to cut out of the holiday. I have 
Time for everything. I can visit a sick friend. I can 
interrupt the man of much occupation when he is busi- 
est. I can insult over him with an invitation to take a 
day's pleasure with me to Windsor this fine May morn- 

25 ing. It is Lucretian pleasure to behold the poor drudges, 
whom I have left behind in the world, carking, and car- 
ing ; like horses in a mill, drudging on in the same eter- 
nal round — and what is it all for ? A man can never 
have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had 



U8SAYS OF ELI A. 169 

I a little son, I would cliristen liini No thitstg— to-do ; 
he should do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his 
element as long as he is operative. I am altogether for 
the life contemplative. "Will no kindly earthquake come 
and swallow up those accursed cotton mills ? Take me 5 
that lumber of a desk there, and bowl it down 

"As low as to the fiends." 

I am no longer . . . , clerk to the Firm of, etc. I am 
Ketired Leisure. I am to be met with in trim gardens. 
I am already come to be known by my vacant face and 10 
careless gesture, perambulating at no fixed pace, nor 
with any settled purpose. I walk about ; not to and 
from. They tell me, a certain cic7n dignitate air, that 
has been buried so long with my other good parts, has 
begun to shoot forth in my person. I grow into gen- 15 
tility perceptibly. When I take up a newspaper, it is 
to read the state of the opera. Opus operatum est. I 
have done all that I came into this world to do. I 
have worked taskwork, and have the rest of the day 
to myself. 20 



170 CHARLES LAMB. 



OLD CHINA. 



I HAVE an almost feminine partiality for old china. 
When I go to see any great house, I inquire for the 
china-closet, and next for the picture gallery. I cannot 
defend the order of preference, but by saying, that we 

5 have all some taste or other, of too ancient a date to 
admit of our remembering distinctly that it was an ac- 
quired one. I can call to mind the first play, and the 
first exhibition, that I was taken to ; but I am not con- 
scious of a time when china jars and saucers were intro- 

10 duced into my imagination. 

I had no repugnance then — why should I now have ? 
— to those little, lawless, azure-tinctured grotesques 
that, under the notion of men and women, float about, 
un circumscribed by any element, in that world before 

15 perspective — a china teacup. 

I like to see my old friends — whom distance cannot 
diminish — figuring up in the air (so they appear to our 
optics), yet on terra firma still, — for so we must in 
courtesy interpret that speck of deejDcr blue, — which 

20 the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, had made to 
spring up beneath their sandals. 



ESSAYS OF ELI A. 171 

I love the men with women's faces, and the women, if 
possible, with still more womanish expressions. 

Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to 
a lady from a salver — two miles off. See how distance 
seems to set off respect ! And here the same lady, or 5 
another — for likeness is identity on teacups — is step- 
ping into a fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this 
calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in 
a right angle of incidence (as angles go in our v/orld) 
must infallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead lo 
— a furlong off on tlie other side of the same strange 
stream ! 

Farther on — if far or near can be predicated of their 
world — see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays. 

Here — a cow and rabbit couchant and co-extensive, — 15 
so objects show, seen through the lucid atmospliere of 
fine Cathay. 

I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over 
our Hyson, (which we are old-fashioned enough to drink 
unmixed still of an afternoon,) some of these speciosa 20 
miracula upon a set extraordinary old blue china (a re- 
cent purchase) which we were now for the first time 
using ; and could not help remarking, how favorable cir- 
cumstances had been to us of late years, that we could 
afford to please the eye sometimes with trifles of this 25 
sort — when a passing sentiment seemed to overshade 
the brows of my companion. I am quick at detecting 
these summer clouds in Bridget. 

"I wish the good old times would come again," she 



172 CHARLES LAMB. 

said, " when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean, 
that I want to be poor ; but there was a middle state " 
— so she was pleased to ramble on, — " in which I am 
sure we w^ere a great deal happier. A purchase is but a 

5 purchase, now that you have money enough and to spare. 
Formerly it used to be a triumph. When we coveted a 
cheap luxury (and, ! how much ado I had to get you 
to consent in those tim.es ! ) — we w^ere used to have a 
debate two or three days before, and to weigh the for 

10 and against, and to think what we might spare it out of, 
and what saving we could hit upon, that should be an 
equivalent. A thing was worth buying then, when we 
felt the money that we paid for it. 

" Do you remember the brown suit, which you made 

15 to hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame upon 
you, it grew so threadbare — and all because of that folio 
Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged home late at 
night from Barker's in Covent Garden ? Do you re- 
member how we eyed it for weeks before we could make 

20 up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a 
determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Satur- 
day night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you 
should be too late, — and when the old bookseller w^ith 
some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling 

25 taper (for he was setting bed wards) lighted out the relic 
from his dusty treasures, — and when you lugged it 
home, wishing it w^ere twice as cumbersome, — and when 
you presented it to me, — and when we were exploring 
the perfectness of it, (collating you called it,) — and 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 173 

while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with 
paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left 
till daybreak, — was there no pleasure in being a poor 
man ? or can those neat black clothes which you wear 
now, and are so careful to keep brushed, since we have 5 
become rich and finical, give you half the honest vanity, 
with which you flaunted it about in that overworn suit 
— your old corbeau — for four or five weeks longer than 
you should have done, to pacify your conscience for the ■ 
mighty sum of fifteen — or sixteen shillings was it ? — lO 
a great affair we thought it then — which you had lav- 
ished on the old folio. Now you can afford to buy any 
book that pleases you, but I do not see that you ever 
bring me home any nice old purchases now. 

" When you came home with twenty apologies for 15 
laying out a less number of shillings upon that print 
after Lionardo, which we christened the ^Lady Blanch;' 
when you looked at the purchase, and thought of the 
money, — and thought of the money, and looked again 
at the picture, — was there no pleasure in being a poor 20 
man ? Now, you have nothing to do but to walk into 
Golnaghi's, and buy a wilderness of Lionardos. Yet do 
you? 

"Then, do you remember our pleasant w^alks to En- 
field, and Porter's bar, and Waltham, when we had a 25 
holiday — holidays, and all other fun, are gone now we 
are rich — and the little handbasket in which I used to 
deposit our day's fare of savory cold lamb and salad, — 
and how you would pry about at noonday for some de- 



174 CHARLES LAMB. 

cent house, where we might go in and produce our store 
— only paying for the ale that you must call for — and 
speculate upon the looks of the landlady, and whether 
she was likely to allow us a tablecloth, — and wish for 

5 such another honest hostess, as Izaak Walton has de- 
scribed many a one on the pleasant banks of the Lea, 
when we went a-fishing — and sometimes they would 
prove obliging enough, and sometimes they would look 
grudgingly upon us, — but we had cheerful looks still 

10 for one another, and would eat our plain food savorily, 
scarcely grudging Piscator his Trout Hall ? Now — 
when we go out a day's pleasuring, which is seldom 
moreover, we ride part of the way — and go into a fine 
inn, and order the best of dinners, never debating the 

15 expense — which after all, never has half the relish of 
those chance country snaps, when we were at the mercy 
of uncertain usage, and a precarious welcome. 

" You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but 
in the pit. Do you remember where it was we used to 

20 sit when we saw the Battle of Hexham, and the Surren- 
der of Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the Chil- 
dren in the Wood, — when we squeezed out our shillings 
a-piece to sit three or four times in a season in the one- 
shilling gallery — where you felt all the time that you 

25 ought not to have brought me — and more strongly I 
felt obligation to you for having brought me — and the 
pleasure was the better for a little shame, — and when 
the curtain drew up, what cared we for our place in the 
house, or what mattered it where we were sitting, when 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 175 

our thoughts were with Rosalind in Arden, or with 
Viola at the court of Illyria ? You used to say, that the 
Gallery was the best place of all for enjoying a play 
socially, — that the relish of such exhibitions must be 
in proportion to the inf requency of going, — that the 5 
company we met there, not being in general readers of 
plays, were obliged to attend the more, and did attend, 
to what was going on, on the stage, — because a word 
lost would have been a chasm, which it was impossible 
for them to fill up. With such reflections we consoled 10 
our pride then, — and I appeal to you, whether, as a 
woman, I met generally with less attention and accom- 
modation than I have done since in more expensive 
situations in the house ? The getting in indeed, and 
the crowding up those inconvenient staircases was bad 15 
enough, — but there was still a law of civility to woman 
recognized to quite as great an extent as we ever found 
in the other passages, — and how a little difficulty over- 
come heightened the snug seat and the play, afterwards ! 
Now we can only pay our money and walk in. You 20 
cannot see you say, in the galleries now. I am sure we 
saw, and heard too, well enough then, — but sight, and 
all, I think, is gone with our poverty. 

^^ There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before 
they became quite common — in the first dish of peas, 25 
while they were yet dear — to have them for a nice 
supper, a treat. What treat can we have now ? If we 
were to treat ourselves now, — that is, to have dainties 
a little above our means, it would be selfish and wicked. 



176 CHARLES LAMB, 

It is the very little more that we allow ourselves beyond 
what the actual poor can get at, that makes what I call 
a treat, — when two people living together, as we have 
done, now and then indulge themselves in a cheap luxury, 

5 which both like ; while each apologizes, and is willing 
to take both halves of the blame to his single share. I 
see no harm in people making much of themselves, in 
that sense of the word. It may give them a hint how 
to make much of others. But now — what I mean by 

10 the word — we never do make much of ourselves. None 
but the poor can do it. I do not mean the veriest poor 
of all, but persons as we were, just above poverty. 

<' I know what you were going to say, that it is mighty 
pleasant at the end of the year to make all meet, — and 

15 much ado we used to have every Thirty-first night of 
December to account for our exceedings, — many a long 
face did you make over your puzzled accounts, and in 
contriving to make it out how we had spent so much — 
or that we had not spent so much — or that it was im- 

20 possible we should spend so much next year, — and still 
we found our slender capital decreasing, — but then, — 
betwixt ways, and projects, and compromises of one sort 
or another, and talk of curtailing this charge, and doing 
without that for the future, — and the hope that youth 

25 brings, and laughing spirits (in which you were never 
poor till now,) we pocketed up our loss, and in conclu- 
sion, with ^ lusty brimmers ' (as you used to quote it 
out of hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton, as you called him), 
we used to welcome in the ' coming guest.' l!^ow we 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 177 

have no reckoning at all at the end of the old year, — 
no flattering promises about the new year doing better 
for us." 

Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occasions, 
that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful 5 
how I interrupt it. I could not help, however, smiling 
at the phantom of wealth which her dear imagination 
had conjured up out of a clear income of poor hun- 
dred pounds a year. " It is true we were happier when 
we were poorer, but we were also younger, my cousin, lo 
I am afraid we must put up with the excess, for if we 
were to shake the superflux into the sea, we should not 
much mend ourselves. That we had much to struggle 
with, as we grew up together, we have reason to be 
most thankful. It strengthened, and knit our compact 15 
closer. We would never have been what we have been 
to each other, if we had always had the sufficiency 
which you now complain of. The resisting power, — 
those natural dilations of the youthful spirit, which 
circumstances cannot straiten, — - with us are long since 20 
passed away. Competence to age is supplementary 
youth, a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the best 
that is to be had. We must ride where we formerly 
walked ; live better and lie softer — and shall be wise 
to do so — than we had means to do in those good old 25 
days you speak of. Yet could those days return, — 
could you and I once more walk our thirty miles a day, 
— could Bannister and Mrs. Bland again be young, and 
you and I be young to see them, — could the good old 



178 CHARLES LAMB. 

one-shilling gallery days return, — they are dreams, my 
cousin, now, — but could you and I at this moment, in- 
stead of this quiet argument, hj our well-carpeted fire- 
side, sitting on this luxurious sofa, — be once more 

5 struggling up those inconvenient staircases, pushed 
about, and squeezed, and elbowed by the poorest rabble 
of poor gallery scrambles, — could I once more hear 
those anxious shrieks of yours, — and the delicious 
Thanh God, we are safe, which always followed when 

10 the topmost stair, conquered, let in the first light of the 
whole cheerful theatre down beneath us, — I know not 
the fathom line that ever touched a descent so deep as 
I would be willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus 
had or the great Jew E, is supposed to have, to 

15 purchase it. And now do just look at that merry little 
Chinese waiter holding an umbrella, big enough for a 
bed-tester, over the head of that pretty insipid half 
Madonna-ish chit of a lady in that very blue summer- 
house.^' 



NOTES. 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 

"Lamb was fond of spending his annual holiday in one or other 
of the great university towns, more often perhaps in Camhridge. 
. . . On its first appearance in the London, the paper was dated 
'August 5, 1820, from my rooms facing the Bodleian.' A sonnet, 
written a year before at Camhridge, tells of the charm that univer- 
sity associations had for one who had been debarred through infir- 
mity of health and poverty from a university education." — Aingeb. 

Page 15, Line 5. Vivares. A celebrated French engraver, 
1709-1780. 

P. 15, 1. 6. WooUett. An English engraver, 1735-1785. 

P. 15, 1. 7. Elia. Lamb's pseudonym. See Introduction. 

P. 15, 1. 8. in my last. Referring to his essay on The South-Sea 
House. 

P. 15, 1. 13. notched. Closely cut, a term applied by the Cava- 
liers to the Roundheads. 

P. 15, 1. 16. agnize. To acknowledge. See Othello, I. iii. 282 :— 

" I do agnize 
A natural and prompt alacrity." 

P. 16, 1. 5. In the first place . . . When Lamb first published 
his collected essays in book form, he omitted the passages here repre- 
sented by points. 

P. 16, 1. 21. Joseph's vest. A reference to Joseph's " coat of 
many colors." See Gen. xxxvii. 3. 

P. 16, 1. 25. red-letter days. So called because formerly marked 
in the calendar of the Book of Common Prayer by red-letter charac- 

179 



180 ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

ters. Only the red-letter days have special services provided for 
them in the Prayer-book, 

Page 16, Line 28. Andrew and John, etc. The original line 

is: — 

" Andrew and Simon, famous after known." 

Paradise Regained, II. 7. 

P. 17, 1. 2. At Christ's. Sc. Hospital. The " Blue-coat School " 
where Lamb was educated. See Introduction. 

P. 17, 1. 3. effigies. Meaning? 

P. 17, 1. 3. Baskett Prayer Book. An edition of the Prayer- 
book with prints, issued in 1713, by John Baskett, printer to the 
king. 

P. 17, 1. 4. his uneasy posture. St. Peter is said to have been 
crucified head downwards. 

P. 17, 1. 6. Marsyas. The Phrygian flute-player. He challenged 
Apollo to a contest of skill, but being beaten by the god, was flayed 
alive for his presumption. 

P. 17, 1. 6. Spagnoletti. Ribera, Jusepe (1588-1656), commonly 
called Lo Spagnoletti, or the Little Spaniard, a leading painter of the 
Neapolitan and partly of the Spanish school, was born near Valencia 
in Spain. In the Museum of Madrid is his Martyrdom of St. 
Bartholomew. 

P. 17, 1. 10. the better Jude. Judas, the brother of Christ. He 
was called the better in order to distinguish him from the traitor. 

P. 17, 1. 15, " far off their coming shone." Adapted from 
Paradise Lost, VI. 768. 

P. 17, 1. 18. the Epiphany. A Christmas festival closing the 
series of Christmas observances, celebrated on the 6th of January, 
the twelfth day after Christmas, in commemoration of the manifesta- 
tion of Christ. 

P. 17, 1. 20. NoTV am I . . . profane. See 1 Henry IV., I. ii. 
104:5f106: " Before I knew thee, Hal, I knew nothing; and now am I, 
if a man should speak trvily, little better than one of the ivicked." 

P. 17, 1. 28. Selden, John (1584-1654), jurist, legal antiquary, 
and Oriental scholar. He represented the University of Oxford in 
the Long Parliament. His chief works were Titles of Honor and 
Table Talk. 

P. 17, 1. 28. Usher, James (1580-1656), prelate and scholar, was 
born in the parish of St. Nicholas, Dublin. The most important of 



NOTES. 181 

his numerous works is Annals of the Old and New Testament. He 
is buried in Westminster Abbey. 

Page 18, Line 2. Bodley. The Bodleian Library, though it liad 
been preceded by various efforts towards a university library, owed 
its origin to Sir Thomas Bodley (1544-1612). Contributing himself 
and procuring contributions from others, he opened the library with 
upwards of 2,000 volumes in 1602, The library now contains 30,000 
manuscripts, and the number of separate works exceeds a million. 
But the number of volumes conveys a very inadequate idea of the 
valuable character of the collection. In the department of Oriental 
manuscripts it is perhaps superior to any other European library, 
and it is exceedingly rich in other manuscript treasures. 

P. 18, 1. 10. admitted ad eundem. "When graduates of one 
university are admitted after certain formalities to the sanie degree 
in another, but are not incorporated as members, they are said to be 
admitted ad eundem gradum,, i.e., to the same rank. 

P. 18, 1. 13. a Sizar, or a Servitor. The former a term at Cam- 
bridge, and the latter at Oxford, applied to an undergraduate, who 
was formerly supported in part by college funds, and who had cer- 
tain menial duties to perform. The name still remains, though the 
duties are abolished. The term Sizar is from the allowances of food 
called sizings. 

P. 18, 1. 14. Gentleman Commoner, or, as he was called at 
Cambridge, a Fellow Commoner, was an undergraduate, who, on 
payment of higher fees, had special privileges, such as dining with 
the Fellows of his college, and wearing a cap and gown of unusually 
rich material. 

P. 18, 1. 20. Christ Church. JEdes Christi, the most important 
college of Oxford. Projected on a still larger scale as Cardinal 
College by its first founder, Wolsey, it was established by Henry 
VIII. in 1525. 

P. 18, 1. 22. Seraphic Doctor. St. Bonaventura (1221-1274) of 
Italy, the religious fervor of whose style procured him the title of 
doctor seraphicus. Dante places him among the saints of the Para- 
diso. 

P. 18, 1. 24. groves of Magdalen. Magdalen is the most beau- 
tiful college at Oxford, and famous for its extensive water-walks in 
the Cherwell meadows. 



182 ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Page 18, Line 29. beadsman. One who prays for the welfare 
of a benefactor; from head, a perforated ball used for counting 
prayers. 

P. 19. 1. 7. Manciple. A steward, particularly of an English 
college or inn of Court. 

P. 19, 1. M. half Janvises. Janus was an old Latin divinity. 
He is represented with two faces, one youthful and one aged, the 
one looking forward and the other backward, in which some have 
professed to see a symbol of the wisdom of the god who beholds 
both the past and the future, and others simply of the return of 
the year. 

P. 19, 1. 21. palpable obscure. See Paradise Lost, II. 406. 

P. 20, 1. 7. those sciential apples. What is the allusion here ? 

P. 20, 1. 12. Herculanean raker. Herculaneum was buried 
by an eruption from Vesuvius in 79. Among other treasures, dis- 
covered by systematic excavation, were some charred papyrus rolls. 

P. 20, 1. 12. credit of the three witnesses. Alluding to the 
disputed verse, 1 John v. 7: "There are three that bear record in 
heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three 
are one." Richard Person, the greatest Greek scholar England has 
ever produced, destroyed the authority of this text in his Letters 
to Archdeacon Travis, 1790. It has been omitted in the Revised 
Version. 

P. 20, 1. 14. G. D. " George Dyer (1755-1841), educated at Christ's 
Hospital and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, a compiler and editor 
and general worker for the booksellers, short-sighted, absent-minded, 
and simple, for whom Lamb had a life-long aifection, and on whose 
peculiarities he was never weary of dwelling." — Ainger. Lamb 
made him the hero of his Amicus Redivivus. 

P. 20, 1. 21. tall Scapula. Johann Scapula, a German philolo- 
gist, born about 1545, was a proofreader in the printing-office of 
Henry Estienne at Geneva. In 1579 he published a Lexicon G7^xco- 
Latinum. 

P. 20, 1. 25. Clifford's-inn. One of the inns of chancery in 
London. 

P. 20, 1. 29. calm and sinless peace. Perhaps an adaptation of 
Wordsworth's "a calm and sinless life" in his Dedication to the 
White Doe. 



NOTES. 183 

Page 21, Line 14. C . Cambridge. Dyer wrote a History of 

the University and Colleges of Cambridge. 

P. 21, 1. 15. caputs. An abbreviation of the phrase caput senatus 
(literally, head of the senate), a council or ruling body in the Univer- 
sity of Cambridge. 

P. 21, 1.27. the Temple. "A lodge in London of the Knights 
Templars. The Temple Church is the only part of it now standing. 
When the order was suppressed in the reign of Edward II., this 
house was given by the king to the Earl' of Pembroke. On the site 
of the London Temple the two Inns of Court called the Middle 
Temple and Inner Temple now stand ; they are occupied by barris- 
ters, and are the joint property of the Societies of the Inner and the 
Middle Temple, which have the right of calling candidates to the 
degree of barrister." — Century. 

P. 22, 1. 1. our friend M.'s. " M. was Basil Montagu, Q. C, and 
editor of Bacon. Mrs. M. was of course Irving's 'noble lady,' so 
familiar to us from Carlyle's Reminiscences. ' Pretty A. S.' was 
Mrs. Montagu's daughter, Anne Skepper, afterwards the wife of 
Mr. Procter (Barry Cornwall). In his memoir of Lamb, Mr. Procter 
significantly remarks that he could vouch personally for the truth of 
this anecdote of Dyer's absent-mindedness." — Ainger. 

P. 22, 1. 12. Queen Lar. A domestic goddess at Rome who pre- 
sided over the fortune of the household. 

P. 22, 1. 19. Sosia. A slave in Plautus's Amphitryon, who is 
confounded by his own double, the god Mercury, in disguise. The 
name is given to any one closely resembling another. 

P. 22, 1. 24. to be absent from the body. See 2 Cor. v. 8: 
" We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the 
body, and to be present with the Lord." 

P. 22, 1. 25. not to speak it profanely. See Hamlet, III. ii. 34. 

P. '22, 1. 28. starts . . . surprised. Compare Wordsworth's Ode 
on Intimations of Immortality : — 

" High instincts before which our mortal Nature 
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised." 

Mount Tabor. A celebrated mountain of northern Palestine, 
commanding probably the finest prospect in the Holy Land. It 



184 ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

owes its celebrity, however, not so much to its beauty, as to its 
having been regarded from early times as the scene of the Trans- 
figuration. 

Parnass-us. A mountain in Phocis, sacred to Apollo and the 
Muses, and regarded by the Greeks as the central point of their 
country. 

co-sphered with Plato. An allusion to Milton's II Pense- 
roso : — 

" Where oft I may outwatch. the Bear 
"With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere 
The spirit of Plato." 

Page 23, Line 1. Harrington, James (1611-1677), a distinguished 
"writer on the philosophy of government. His chief work is the 
Oceana, a work on the theory of the state. 

P. 23, 1. 24. Agur's wish. See Prov. xxx. 8: " Give me n^.ther 
poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me." 

P. 24, 1. 22. Bath, Buxton, Scarborough, Harrow^gate. 
Fashionable English 'resorts. 

P. 24, 1. 24. better . . . Damascus. A reference to 2 Kings 
V. 12 : " Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than 
all the waters of Israel?" 

P. 24, 1. 26. Delectable Mountains; the Interpreter; the 
House Beautiful. See Bunyan's Pilgrim^s Progress. 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 

Page 25, Line 12. He shall serve his brethren. Compare the 
words of Jacob to Esau, Gen. xxvii. 40: "And by thy sword shalt 
thou live, and shalt serve thy brother." 

P. 25, 1. 17. Alcibiades. The celebrated Athenian general and 
statesman, born B.C. 450. He was handsome, rich, clever, and disso- 
lute. 

P. 25, L 17. Falstaflf. Appears in The Merry Wives of Windsor, 
and the two parts of Henry IV. He is a very fat, sensual, and witty 
old knight; a boastful, good-tempered liar; and the boon companion 
of the Prince of Wales. 

P. 25, 1. 17. Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729), essayist and dra- 



NOTES. 185 

matic writer. In 1709, under the name of Isaac Bickerstaff , he estab- 
lished the Tatler, in which he had the assistance of Addison, as he 
also had in the Spectator and Guardian. The imprudent, impulsive 
Steele could never get clear of financial difiiculties, and he was 
obliged to retire from London in 1724, and live in the country. 

Page 25, Line 18. Brinsley. Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751- 
1816), statesman, wit, and dramatist. His profuse habits involved 
him deeply in debt, and the latter part of his life was embittered 
by misfortunes, principally arising from his own improvidence. 

P. 26, 1. 5. Tooke. John Home (1736-1812), politician and philol- 
ogist, known by his family name of Home. 

P. 26, 1. 10. caileth all the world up to be taxed. An allusion 
to Luke ii. 1 : " There went out a decree from Csesar Augustus that 
all the world should be taxed." 

P. 26, 1. 20. Candlemas, Feb. 2, Feast of Holy Michael, 
Sept. 29, two of the quarter-days for paying and receiving rents, 
interest, and school fees. 

p. 26, 1. 21. lene tormentum. Gentle rack. From Horace, Od. 
3, 21, 13. " Tu lene tormentum ingenio admoves." 

P. 26, 1. 24. Propontic. Propontis, ancient name of the Sea 
of Marmora, situated between Europe and Asia. 

P. 27, 1. 2. Liazarus . . . Dives. See Luke xvi. 20-31. 

P. 27, 1. 8. Ralph Bigod. "John Fenwick, a light-hearted 
spendthrift, immortalised in this essay as the typical man who bor- 
rows." —AmGBK. He was editor of the Albion, one of the London 
journals to which Lamb contributed jokes. See the essay on News- 
papers Thirty-five Feans Ago. 

P. 27, 1. 24. To slacken virtue, etc. From Paradise Regained, 
XI. 455. 

P. 28, 1. 24. Conius, god of revelry, and the hero of Milton's 
mask Comus. 

P. 28, 1. 29. Hagar's offspring. See Gen. xxi. 9-21. 

P. 30, 1. 2. Comberbatch. A name assumed by Coleridge when 
he left Cambridge University in a fit of despondency, and enlisted 
in the Fifteenth Dragoons. 

P. 30, 1. 7. Switzer-like. Switzer, one of a hired body-guard of 
Swiss, attendant upon a pope or king. 

P. 30, 1. 8. Guildhall giants. Two huge figures of wood, about 



186 ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

fourteen feet in height, in the Guildhall, London. From earliest 
times these two giants have been the pride of London, and are prob- 
ably exaggerated representations of real persons and events. 

Page 30, Line 9. Opera Bonaventurse. See note on Oxford in 
the Vacation, p. 18, 1. 22. 

P. 30, 1. 12, Bellarmine. An eminent Italian cardinal and 
champion of Catholicism, born in 1542. 

P. 30, 1. 13. Ascapart. A giant conquered by Sir Bevis of 
Southampton. He was thirty feet high, and the space between his 
eyes was twelve inches. His effigy figures in the city gates of 
Southampton. According to "Warton, he is a character in very old 
French romances. 

P. 30, 1. 24. Brown on Urn Burial. '* Of all old writers the 
author of Urn Burial and the Religio Medici appears oftenest in 
quotations or allusions in the Essays of Elia. It is likely that it was 
from Sir Thomas Browne that he caught the fashion of expressing 
his opinions and feelings in the first person." — Ainger. 

P. 31, 1. 1. Dodsley's dramas. Robert Dodsley (1709-1764) was 
a noted English bookseller and author. He published A Select Col- 
lection of Old Plays. 

P. 31, 1. 2. Vittoria Corombona. The "white devil " in Web- 
ster's tragedy of that name, first acted in 1607. 

P. 31, 1. 4. Anatomy of Melancholy. A fainous work by 
Robert Burton (1576-1640), composed to cure himself of melancholy. 

P. 31, 1. 5. The Complete Angler, or Contemplative Man's liec- 
reation, by Izaak Walton, appeared in 1653. It has passed through 
numerous editions, and is considered one of the best pastorals in the 
English language. 

P. 31, 1. 6. John Bunele. From The Life and Opinions of John 
Buncle, Esq., by Thomas Amory. See note on Imperfect Sympathies, 
p. 74, 1. 7. 

P. 31, 1. 26. wayward, spiteful K. Kenney, the dramatist, who 
mai-ried .a Frenchwoman, and lived for some years at Versailles. 
Lamb visited him there in 1822. 

P. 31, 1. 29. thrice noble Margaret Newcastle (1625-1673). She 
is best known by The Life of the Thrice Noble, High and Puissant 
Prince, William Cavendish and Earl of Newcastle ; written by the 
Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princess, Margaret, Duchess 



NOTES. 187 

of Neio castle, his Wife. Lamb called this work " a jewel for which 
no casket was rich enough." 

Page 32, Line 17. Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke. An English 
poet and miscellaneous writer, horn in Warwickshire in 1554:. He 
was an intimate friend and biographer of his kinsman Sir Philip 
Sidney. His epitaph, composed by himself, was: " Fulke Greville, 
servant to Queen Elizabeth, counsellor to King James, and friend 
to Sir Philip Sidney. 

P. 32, 1. 20. Zimmermaii. Johann Georg von Zimmerman, an 
eminent Swiss philosopher and physician (1725-1795). He published 
in 1784 his celebrated work On Solitude ( Von der Einsamkeit), which 
was translated into all the languages of Europe. Catharine II. of 
Russia was so pleased with this work that she made him a present 
of a diamond ring, and invited him to come to St. Petersburg as court 
physician, but he declined the honor. 

P. 32, 1. 24. S. T. C. " Of course Coleridge again. It is a good 
illustration of Lamb's fondness for puzzling, that, having to instance 
his friend, he indicates him three times by a different alias. Cole- 
ridge's constant practice of enriching his own and others' books with 
these marginalia is well known." — Ainger. 

P. 33,1. 2. Daniel, Samuel (1562-1619). "A meritorious but 
neglected English poet." He lived some years in London, where he 
associated with Shakespeare, Marlowe, and other poets. On the 
death of Spenser, Daniel received the somewhat vague ofS-ce of 
poet-laureate, which he seems, however, to have shortly resigned in 
favor of Ben Jonson. 

NEW YEAR'S EVE. 

Page 35, Line 3. I saw the skirts of the departing Year. 

From Coleridge's Ode to the Departing Year. 

P. 35, 1. 11. Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. 

From Pope's translation of the Odyssey, Book XY., line 84. 

P. 35, 1. 27. Alice W n. " According to Lamb's ' Key ' for 

Winterton. In any case, the fictitious name by which Lamb chose 
to indicate the object of his boyish attachment, whose form and 
features he loved to dwell on in his early sonnets." — Ainger. 

P. 37, 1. 2. Thou art sophisticated. Compare Lear, III. iv. 110 : 
"Ha! here's three on's are sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself." 



188 ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Page 38, Line 15. IJike a weaver's shuttle. From Job vii. 6: 
"My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle." 

P. 39, 1. 1. Liavinian shores. An allusion to the voyage of the 
Trojan ^neas to Latium in Italy, where he founded the city Lavin- 
ium. See the opening lines of Virgil's JEneid. 

P. 39. 1. 18. s^veet assurance of a look. From Matthew Roy- 
don's Elegy on Phili2J Sidney. 

P. 40, 1. 2. Phoebus' sickly sister. Phoebe, or Diana, who, as 
sister of the sun-god Apollo, was regarded as the goddess of the 
moon. 

P. 40, 1. 2. innutritious one denounced in the Canticles. An 
allusion to Solomon's Song, or The Canticles, viii. 8. 

P. 40, 1. 4. I hold with the Persian. The Persians were fire 
worshippers. 

P. 40, 1. 13. Friar John. A celebrated character in Rabelais' 
Pantagruel. "A tall, lean, wide-mouthed, long-nosed friar of Seville, 
who despatched his matins with wonderful celerity, and ran through 
his vigils quicker than any of his fraternity." 

P. 41, 1. 10. Cotton, Charles (1G30-1687), a humorous poet and 
translator. He was an adopted son of Izaak Walton, and wrote an 
addition to the Complete Angler. 

P. 43, 1. 7. Spa, or Spa Water. A general name for medical 
springs; so called from Spa in Belgium, in the seventeenth century 
the most fashionable watering-place in Europe. 

MRS. BATTLE'S OPINION ON WHIST. 

"There is probably no evidence as to the original of Mrs. Battle. 
Several of Lamb's commentators have endeavored to prove her iden- 
tity with Mary Field, Lamb's grandmother, so long resident with the 
Plumer family ; the sole fact common to them being that Lamb rep- 
resents Mrs. Battle (in tbe essay on Blakesmoor) as having died at 
Blakesware, where also Mrs. Field ended her days." — Ainger. 

Page 45, Line 2. fought a good fight. From 2 Tim. iv. 7. 

P. 45, 1. 4. like a dancer. A reference to Antony and Cleopa- 
tra, III. ii. 35: — 

"he at Philippi kept 
His sword e'en like a dancer." 



NOTES. 189 

Page 46, Line 1. Ms celebrated game of Ombre. Described 
in Canto III. 

P. 46, 1. 5. Mr. Bowles. William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850), an 
English poet who edited the works of Pope in 1807. He made criti- 
cisms which provoked a long controversy between himself and the 
two poets, Byron and Campbell. He published in 1825 his Final 
Appeal to the Literary Public Relative to Pope. 

P. 47, 1. 2. Machiavel. Born of an ancient but decayed family 
at Florence, in 1649, he was employed in public affairs from a very 
early age, and is the literary representative of the important period 
to which he belongs. His duties were almost entirely diplomatic. 
He was employed in a great variety of missions, the instructions and 
correspondence connected with which may almost be said to contain 
the secret political history of Italy during his time. 

P. 48, 1. 11. Vandykes. Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641) was 
a celebrated Dutch portrait painter, and student of Rubens. At the 
command of Charles I. he came to England, where he made portraits 
of characters who played important parts in an era noted for great 
events. 

P. 48, 1. 11. Paul Potters. A Dutch painter of cattle and land- 
scapes (1625-1654). 

P. 48, 1. 18. Pam. The knave of clubs in the game of loo. 

P. 49, 1. 4. for the goddess. Diana, the patron goddess of the 
Ephesians. 

P. 49, 1. 10. Sienna. A city of Tuscany, thirty miles from Flor- 
ence, celebrated for its marble and works of art. 

P. 49, 1. 11. elsewhere. See his essay on The South-Sea House. 

P. 51, 1. 17. size ace. Six and one on the two dice, considered a 
lucky throw. 

P. -53, 1. 6. my cousin Bridget. His sister Mary Lamb. See 
Introduction. 

P. 53, 1. 14. manes. The deified shades of the dead. 

A CHAPTER ON EARS. 

Page 54, Line 5. volutes. The spiral scroll which forms the 
chief feature of the Ionic capital, and which, on a much smaller scale, 
is also an ornament in the Corinthian and Composite capitals. 



190 ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Page 54, Line 12. Defoe, that hideous disfigurement. Daniel 
Defoe (1661-1731) was a celebrated English novelist and political 
writer. His ironical treatise, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, 
in 1703, occasioned his arrest, and he was sentenced to be fined, and 
to stand three times in the pillory. "It is incorrect, however," 
says his biographer, William Minto, "to say with Pope that, — 

'Earless on high stood unabashed Defoe.' 

His ears were not cropped, as the barbarous phrase went, and he 
had no reason to be abashed. A ring- of admirers was formed 
round the place of punishment ; bunches of flowers instead of hand- 
fuls of garbage were thrown at the criminal." 

P. 55, 1. 10. Alice W n. See note on iVew Year's Eve. 

P. 55, 1. 20. my friend A.'s. " Doubtless Lamb's friend, William 
Ayrton, the well-known musical critic of that day (1777-1858)." — 

AiNGER. 

P. 56, 1. 16. Baralipton. An artificial term. In logic a mne- 
monic name for one of the figures of syllogism. 

P. 56, 1. 20. Jubal. The inventor of the lyre and the flute. See 
Gen. iv. 19-21. 

P. 56, 1. 29. midsummer madness. See Twelfth Night, III. 
iv. 61. " Why, this is very midsummer madness." 

P. 57, 1. 18. Hogarth's laughing audience. William Hogarth 
(1697-1761) was a celebrated satirical painter. He published a series 
of engravings called The Rake's Progress, followed by Marriage a la 
Mode, Beer Lane, and the Enraged Musician. A Pleased Audience 
at a Play, or The Laughing Audience, was the title of an etching. 
See Lamb, On the Genius of Hogarth. 

P. 57, 1. 26. Party in a parlor, etc. From Wordsworth's Peter 
Bell. 

P. 58, 1. 11. mime. A dramatic entertainment among the an- 
cient Greeks of Sicily and Southern Italy, and the Romans, consist- 
ing generally of farcical mimicry of real events and persons. 

P. 58, 1. 18. Burton. See note on The Two Races of Men, p. 31, 1. 4. 

P. 59, 1. 19. Catholic friend Nov . " Vincent Novello, the 

well-known organist and composer, father of Mme. Novello and Mrs. 
Cowden-Clarke (1781-1861)." —Ainger. 

P. 60, 1. 1. the Psalmist . . . dove's vsdngs. "And I said, Oh 



NOTES. 191 

that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at 
rest." — Ps. Iv. 6. 

Page 60, Line 3. that other . . . cleanse his mind. Perhaps 
an allusion to Fs. li. 7. 

P. 60, 1. 7. rapt above earth, etc. "'As I thus sat, these and 
other sights had so fully possessed my soul with content that I thought, 
as the poet has happily expressed it, — 

I was for that time lifted above earth ; 

And possessed joys not promised at my birth.' 

Walton's Complete Angler, Part I. chap, iv." — Ainger. 

P. 60, 1. 16. Arions. Arion, a Greek poet of Lesbos, who flour- 
ished about 700 B.C., and was famous as a player upon the cithara. 
According to the legend, Arion, while returning from a musical con- 
test in Sicily in which he had been victor, was thrown into the sea by 
the sailors, but was saved and carried to Tsenarus by dolphins which 
had gathered about the ships to listen to his lyre. 

P. 60, 1. 17. Tritons. Subordinate sea deities. A common attri- 
bute is a shell-trumpet which they blow to quiet the restless waves. 

P. 60, 1. 23. triple tiara. The Pope's triple crown. 

P. 60, 1. 29. Marcion, Ebion, and Cerinthus. Celebrated her- 
etics of the East of the first and second centuries. 

P. 60, 1. 29. Gog and Magog. Princes of the earth and enemies 
of the Christian Church. See Bev. xx. 7-9. 

A QUAKERS' MEETING. 

Page 63, Line 6. to refrain even from good words. See 

Prayer-book version of Ps. xxxix. 3: "I held my tongue, and spake 
nothing; I kept silence, yea, even from good words." 

P. 63, 1. 11. Boreas, and Cesias, and Argestes loud. From 
Paradise Lost, X. 699. 

P. 63, 1. 17. that call unto deeps. See Ps. xlii. 7. 

P. 63, 1. 28. The Carthusian. The order of Carthusian monks 
was founded in 1086 by St. Bruno, in the Grand Chartreuse, a wild 
mountainous district in France. The name in England was corrupted 
into Charter House. On entering this austere order, the Carthusian 
friars vow themselves to a complete silence, and perform their duties 
without speaking a word. 



192 ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Page 64, Line 7. Zimmennann. See note on The Two Races 
of Men, p. 32, 1. 20. 

P. 64, 1. 15. to be felt. See Ex. x. 21. 

P. 64, 20. Sands, ignoble things, etc. "From Lines on the 
Tombs in WesUninster Abbey, by Francis Beaumont." — Ainger. 

P. 64, 1. 24. old Night. 

*' The reign of Chaos and old Night." 

Paradise Lost, I. 543. 

P. 65, 1. 1. How reverend is the view, etc. " A good example 
of Lamb's habit of constructing a quotation out of his general recol- 
lection of a passage. The lines he had in his mind are from Con- 
greve's Morning Bride, Act II. Scene 1: — 

' How reverend is the face of this tall pile, 
Whose ancient pillars raise their marble heads 
To bear aloft its arched and ponderous roof, 
By its own weight made stedfast and immovable, 
Looking tranquillity.' " — Aikgek. 

P. 65, 1. 6. consistory. An ecclesiastical or spiritual court. 

P. 66, 1. 22. the Writings of John Woolman. " ' A journal of 
the life, gospel-labours, and Christian experience of that faithful 
minister of Jesus Christ, John Woolman, late of Mount Holly, in the 
Province of Jersey, North America ' (1720-1772). Woolman was an 
American Quaker of humble origin, an 'illiterate tailor,' one of the 
first who had ' misgivings about the institution of slavery.' Crabb 
Robinson, to whom Lamb introduced the book, became rapturous 
over it. ' His religion is love ; his whole existence and all his pas- 
sions were love.' " — Aikger. 

P. 67, 1. 21. from head to foot equipt in iron mail. From 
Wordsworth's poem, 'Tis Said that Some Have Died for Love. 

P. 68, 1. 11. Dis at Enua. Pluto, who carried off Proserpine 
while she was gathering flowers at Enna, in Sicily, and made her 
queen of the infernal regions. 

P. 68, 1. 17. Trophonius. The cave of Trophonius was one of 
the most celebrated oracles of Greece. 

P. 68, 1. 27. forty feeding like one. From Wordsworth's poem 

beginning — 

*' The cock is crowing, the stream is flowing." 



NOTES. 193 

"I have noted elsewhere Lamb's strong native sympathy with 
the Quaker spirit and Quaker manner and customs, a sympathy so 
marked that it is difficult to believe it was not inherited, and that on 
one or other side of his parentage he had not relations with the 
Society of Friends. His picture of the Quakerism of sixty years 
ago is of almost historical value, so great are the changes that have 
since divided the society against itself." — Ainger. 

IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 

Page 70, Line 6. author of tlie Religio Medici. See note on 
TJie Tivo Races of Men, p. 30, 1. 24. 

P. 70, 1. 7. notional and conjectural essences. Brown says in 
his Religio Medici, "Therefore, for spirits, I am so far from deny- 
ing their existence, that I could easily believe, that not only whole 
countries, but particular persons, have their tutelary and guardian 
angels." 

P. 70, 1. 16. Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky. From 
Paradise Lost, VII. 23. The original line is — 

" Standing on earth, nor rapt above the pole." 

P. 73, 1. 3. His Minerva. Minerva, the Roman counterpart of 
the Greek Pallas Athena, is said to have been born from the head 
of Zeus; springing forth in complete armor. 

P. 73, 1. 13. true touch. Alluding to the use of the touchstone 
\o try the quality of metals. See Richard III., IV. ii. 8: — 

" now do I play tlie toticli, 
To try if thou be current gold indeed." 

P. 74, 1. 7. John Buncle. " 'The Life of John Buncle, Esq., 
containing various observations and reflections made in several parts 
of the world, and many extraordinary relations.' By Thomas Amory 
(1756-1766). Amory was a stanch Unitarian, an earnest moralist, a 
humorist, and eccentric to the verge of insanity — four qualifications 
which would appeal irresistibly to Lamb's sympathies."— Ainger. ^ 

P. 74, 1. 15. a graceful female after Leonardo da Vinci. 
" This print, a present to Lamb from Crabb Robinson in 1816, was 
of Leonardo da Vinci's Vierge aux Rockers. It was a special favor- 



194 ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

ite with Charles and Mary, and is the subject of some verses by 
Charles." — Ainger. 

Page 76, Like 1. Thomson, James (1700-1771), a native of Rox- 
burghshire, Scotland, and author of The Seasons and Castle of Indo- 
lence. 

P. 76, 1. 2. SmoUett, Tobias George (1721-1771), native of Dum- 
bartonshire, Scotland, and author of Roderick Random an^ Humphrey 
Clinker. 

P. 76, 1. 4. Rory. Is short for Roderick. 

P. 76, 1. 11. Stonehenge. A celebrated prehistoric monument in 
Salisbury Plain, of which only seventeen stones of the outer circle 
are now standing. 

P. 76, 1. 16. Hugh of Lincoln. An English boy alleged to have 
been put to death by Jews, at Lincoln, in 1255, and to have been 
buried with the honor of a martyr in Lincoln Cathedral. He is 
mentioned at the end of Chaucer's Prioresses Tale. 

P. 77, 1.11. B . John Braham (1777-1856), a celebrated tenor 

singer of Jewish origin. 

P. 77, 1. 16. Shibboleth. A Hebrew test-word, used by Jeph- 
thah, to distinguish the fleeing Ephraimites from his own men, the 
Gileadites. See Judges xii. 6: " Then said they unto him, Say now 
Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pro- 
nounce it right." It now means a test-word, or a watchword of a 
party. 

P. 78, 1. 3. Jael. See Judges iv. 17-22. 

P. 78, 1. 20. to live with them. See Othello, I. iii. 249: — 

" That I did love the Moor to live with him. 
My downright violence and storm of fortunes 
May trumpet to the world." 

P. 78, 1. 26. Evelyn, John (1620-1706). He owes his celebrity 
to his Memoirs, which are written in the form of a diary, by one who 
liad accustomed himself to habits of close observation during the 
most dramatic period in the recent history of England. 

P. 78, 1. 28. To sit a guest. Slightly changed from Paradise 
Regained, II. 278: — 

" Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse." 



NOTES. 195 

Page 80, Line 10. a more sacred example. An allusion to 

Matt. xxil. 17-21. 

P. 80, 1. 24. I was travelling . . . with three male Quakers. 

"This adventure happened not to Lamb, but to Sir Anthony Car- 
lisle, the surgeon, from whom Lamb had the anecdote."— Ainger. 

MY RELATIONS. 

" In these two successive essays, and in that on the Benchers of 
the Inner Temple, Lamb draws portraits of singular interest to us, of 
his father, aunt, brother, and sister -all his near relations with one 
exception. The mother's name never occurs in letter or published 
writing after the first bitterness of the calamity of September, 1796, 
had passed away. This was doubtless out of consideration for the 
feelings of his sister. Yery noticeable is the frankness with which 
he describes the less agreeable side of the character of his brother 
John, who was still living, and apparently on quite friendly terms 
with Charles and Mary." — Ainger. 

Page 82, Line 13. I had an aunt. " A sister of John Lamb the 
elder, who generally lived with the family, and contributed some- 
thing to the common income. After the death of the mother, a lady 
of comfortable means, a relative of the family, offered her a home ; 
but the arrangement did not succeed, and the aunt returned to die 
among her own people." — Ainger. 

P. 82, 1. 20. Thomas a Kempis. The authorship of The Imita- 
tion of ' Christ {Imitatio Christi) is usually ascribed to Thomas a 
Kempis. It has been translated into more languages than any other 
book except the Bible. 

P. 83, 1. 9. chapel in Essex Street. A Unitarian chapel. 
P. 84:! 1. 5. James and Bridget Ella. His brother and sister, 
John and Mary Lamb. 

P. 84, 1. 12. climacteric. The climacteric years of a man's life 
were the years ending the third, fifth, seventh, and ninth period of 
seven years, and were believed to be attended by some remarkable 
change in health or fortune. The sixty-third was called the grand 
or great climacteric, and was thought especially dangerous. 

P. 84, 1. 16. Yorick. A clergyman in Sterne's Tristram Shandy, 
meant for himself. The name was suggested by the clown-scene in 
Hamlet. 



196 ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Page 85, Line 14. Domenichino. Domenico Zampieri, a Bo- 

lognese painter (1581-1641). Among liis masterpieces is the Com- 

munion of St. Jerome, which is in the Vatican, opposite Eaphael's 

Transfiguration. 

'p. 85, 1.22. Charles of Sweden. Charles the Twelfth (1682-1718). 

P. 85, 1. 22. upon instinct. See Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV., II. iv. 
300. 

P. 86, 1. 17. thus sitting, etc. See Paradise Lost, II. 164. 

P. 87, 1. 9. lungs shall crow, etc. See As You Like It, II. vii. 30. 

P. 87, 1. 25. Claude. Claude Lorrain (1600-1682) was a French 
landscape painter. 

P. 87, 1. 25. Hobhima, or Hobbema (1638-1709), a Dutch landscape 
painter. 

P. 88, 1. 26. his Cynthia of the minute. See Pope, Moral Essays, 
Ep. II. 19. 

P. 88, 1. 25. Carracci. There were three Italian painters of this 
name. 

P. 90, 1. 4. aU for pity he could die. Cf. Lear, IV. vii. 53 : — 

" I should e'en die with pity 
To see another thus." 

P. 90, 1. 7. Thomas Clarkson. An English abolitionist, occupied 
as pamphleteer and agitator, 1786-1794. 

P. 90, 1. 8. true yoke-fellow with Time. From Wordsworth's 
sonnet to Clarkson. 

MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 

Page 92, Line 1. Bridget Elia. Mary Lamb. "The lives of 
the brother and sister are so bound together, that the illustration 
of their joint life afforded by this essay and that on Old China are of 
singular interest. They show us the brighter and happier intervals 
of that life, without which, indeed, it could hardly have been borne 
for those eight-and-thirty years." — Ainger. 

P. 92, 1. 7. the rash king. Jephthah. See Judges xi. 

P. 92, 1. 9. with a difference. See Hamlet, IV. v. 182: " O you 
must wear your rue with a difference." 

P. 94, 1. 16. stuff of the conscience. 



NOTES. 197 

" Yet do I hold it very stuff o' the conscience 
To do no contrived murder." — Othello, I. ii. 2. 

Page 96, Line 22. But thou, that didst appear, etc. From 
Wordsworth, Yarroio Visited, st. 6. 

P. 98, 1. 4. scriptural cousins. See St. Luke i. 

P. 98, 1. 10. B. F. Barron Field, a barrister, wlio went out to 
New South Wales, in 1816, as judge of the Supreme Court at Sydney. 
See Lamb, Distant Co7^respondents, which is in the above of a letter 
to him. 

THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 

Page 100, Line 2. the Temple. See note on Oxford in the 
Vacation, p. 21, 1, 27. 

P. 100, 1. 9. There when they came, etc. From Spenser, Pro- 
thalamion, st. 8. 

P. 100, 1. 22. Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight. 
" Paper buildings, facing King's Bench Walk in the Temple. The 
line is doubtless improvised for the occasion." — Ainger. 

P. 101, 1. 7. Twickenham. Eleven miles above London on the 
west bank of the Thames. 

P. 101, 1. 23. Ah ! yet doth beauty. From Shakespeare, Son- 
net civ. 

P. 102, 1. 12. carved it out quaintly. An allusion to 3 Henry 

VL, II. V. 24. 

" methinks it were a happy life, 
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point." 

P. 105, 1. 11. Elisha bear. See 2 Kings ii. 24. 

P. 106, 1. 6. Lovel. His father, John Lamb. 

P. 106, 1. 21. Miss Blandy. Executed at Oxford in 1752 for 
poisoning her father at the instigation of her lover. 

P. 107, 1. 16. Susan P . " Susannah Pierson, sister of Salt's 

brother-Bencher, Peter Pierson, mentioned in this essay, and one of 
Salt's executors. By his second codicil. Salt bequeaths her, as a 
mark of regard, £500 ; his silver inkstand ; and the works of Pope, 
Swift, Shakespeare, Addison, and Steele; also Sherlock's Sermons 
(Sherlock had been Master of the Temple), and any other books she 
likes to choose out of his library, hoping that, ' by reading and re- 
flection,' they will * make her life more comfortable.' How oddly 



198 ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

touching this bequest seems to us, in the light thrown on it by Lamb's 
account of the relation between Salt and his friend's sister. "What 
a pleasant glimpse, again, is here afforded of the ' spacious closet 
of good old English reading ' into which Charles and Mary were 
' tumbled,' as he told us, at an early age, when they ' browsed at will 
upon that fair and wholesome pasturage.' " — Ainger. 

Page 108, Line 4. moldore. A gold coin, formerly current in 
Portugal. It was worth about $6.50. 

P. 108, 1. 14. Hie currus et arma fuere. An adaptation from 
Virgil. See JEneid, I. 16. 

P. 108, 1. 16. nunks. Meaning? 

P. 108, 1. 17. Elwes. John Meggott (17M-1789), a noted English 
miser, son of a brewer named Meggott. Elwes was his mother's 
name, which he took in 1750. He became a member of Parliament, 
and is said to have left more than £500,000. 

P. 109, 1. 7. his flapper. See Gulliver's Travels, Voyage to 
Laputa, ii. : — 

" The minds of these people are so taken up with intense specula- 
tions that they can neither speak nor attend to the discourses of 
others without being roused, for which reason those people who are 
able to afford it always keep a flapper in their family ; and the busi- 
ness of this officer is generally to strike with his bladder the mouth 
of him who is to speak, and the right ear of him or them to whom 
the speaker addresseth himself." 

P. 109, 1. 28. Garrick's. David Garrick, the famous English 
actor, purchased, in partnership with Lucy, Drury Lane Theatre, of 
which he continued to be proprietor until he retired from the stage 
in 1776. He enjoyed the friendship of the most noted men of the 
day. Johnson said of him, that " his death eclipsed the gayety of 
London." 

P. 110, 1. 14. a remnant most forlorn, etc. From one of 
Lamb's own poems (February, 1797), "written on the day of my 
aunt's funeral." 

"One parent yet is left — a wretclied thing, 
, . A sad sui-vivor of his buried wife, 

A palsy-smitten, childish, old, old man, 
A semblance most forlorn of what he was, 
A Merry, Cheerful man." 



NOTES. 199 

Page 110, Line 17. Bayes. A dramatic coxcomb, and the lead- 
ing character in Buckingham's Rehearsal. The play is a satire 
on Dryden and his contemporaries, and the character of Bayes rep- 
resents Dryden himself. 

P. Ill, 1. 28. combination rooms. In the University of Cam- 
bridge a room adjoining the hall, into which the Fellows withdraw 
after dinner for wine, dessert, and conversation. 

P. 112, 1. 22. Friar Bacon. Roger Bacon (1214-1292), a cele- 
brated English philosopher and monk, called the Admirable Doctor. 
He is thought not to have been appreciated by his age because he 
was so far in advance of it. He was profoundly versed in the lan- 
guages and the known sciences, and has been accredited with the 
invention of gunpowder. 

P. 114, 1. 6. reducing. What is the meaning here ? 

P. 114, 1. 13. R. N. Bandal Norris, sub-treasurer of the Inner 
Temple, and an old and loyal friend of Lamb's father. 

P. 115, 1. 10. green and vigorous senility. See Virgil, ^neid 

VI. 304 : — 

" Cruda dec viridisque senectus." 



DKEAM-CHILDEEN ; A REVEitY. 

*' The mood in which Lamb was prompted in this singularly affect- 
ing confidence was clearly due to a family bereavement a month or 
two before the date of the essay. I may be allowed to repeat words 
of my own, used elsewhere, on this subject. ' Lamb's elder brother 
John was then lately dead. A letter to Wordsworth of March, 1822, 
mentions his death as even then recent, and speaks of a certain 
"deadness to everything " which the writer dates from that event. 
The "broad, burly, jovial " John Lamb (so Talfourd describes him) 
had lived his own easy prosperous life up to this time, not altogether 
avoiding social relations with his brother and sister, but evidently 
absorbed to the last in his own interests and pleasures. The death of 
this brother, wholly unsympathetic as he was with Charles, served 
to bring home to him his loneliness. He was left in the world with 
but one near relation, and that one too often removed from him for 
months at a time by the saddest of afflictions. No wonder if he be- 
came keenly aware of his solitude.' The emotion discernible in this 



200 ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

essay is absolutely gemiine ; the blending of fact with fiction in the 
details is curiously arbitrary." — Ainger. 

Page IIG, Line 6. their great-grandmother Field. Lamb's 
grandraother, Mary Field. See Introduction. 

P. 121, 1. 2. the fair Alice W n. See note on New Year's 

Eve, p. 35, 1. 27. "Her actual name was, I have the best reason to 
believe, Ami Simmons. She afterwards married Mr. Bartram, the 
pawnbroker of Prince Street, Leicester Square. The complete his- 
tory of this episode in Lamb's life will probably never come to light. 
There are many obvious reasons why any idea of marriage should 
have been indefinitely abandoned. The poverty in Lamb's home is 
one such reason ; and one, even more decisive, may have been the dis- 
covery of the taint of madness, that was inherited in more or less 
degree by all the children." — Aingeb. 

BLAKESMOOE, IN H SHIHE. 

"Blakesmoor, as has been already observed, was Blakesware, 
a dower-house of the Plumers, about five miles from Ware, in Hert- 
fordshire. . . . Sometimes there would be no members of the family 
to inhabit it, and at such times old Mrs. Field, who held the post 
of housekeeper for the last fifty or sixty years of her life, reigned 
supreme over the old place. Her three grandchildren were then 
often with her, and the old-fashioned mansion, with its decaying 
tapestries and carved chimneys, together with the tranquil, rural 
beauty of the gardens and the surrounding country, made an impres- 
sion on the childish imagination of Lamb, which is not to be over- 
looked in considering the influence which moulded his thought and 
style." — Ainger. 

Page 123, Line 27. Cowley. Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) pub- 
lished at the age of sixteen a volume of poems called Poetic Blos- 
soms, and in 1647 he wrote The Mistress, "a series of poems replete 
with frigid conceits which then passed for wit." 

P. 124, 1. 10. Ovid. Publius Ovidius Naso, a popular Roman 
poet, born in 43 B.C. His best-known work is the Metamorphoses, 
which reveals wonderful range of imagination. What ancient critics 
thought his most perfect work, Medea, has been lost. 

P. 124, 1. 11. Actseoii in mid sprout. In Grecian mythology 



NOTES. 201 

Actseon was a hunter, who surprised Diana bathing, was changed by 
her into a stag, and torn to pieces by his own hounds. In art he is 
represented with sprouting horns. 

Page 124, Line 14. Marsyas. See note on Oxford in the Vaca- 
tion, p. 17, 1. 6. 

P. 125, 1. 19. garden-loving poet. Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), 
writer, politician, and assistant secretary to Milton. The lines occur 
in Appleton House, a descriptiye poem of the home of Lord Fairfax 
in Yorkshire. 

P. 125, 1. 21. gadding vines. 

" With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown." 

Lycidas, line 40. 

P. 126, 1. 12. Mowbray's or De Clifford's. Two of the oldest 
families in England. 

P. 126, 1. 25. 'Scutcheon. Coat-of-arms. From Latin scutum, 

a shield. 

P. 126, 1. 29. Resurgam. I shall rise again (from the grave). 

P. 127, 1. 13. Damoetas. A poetical term for a herdsman. 
Theocritus and Virgil use the name in their pastorals. See Lycidas, 

line 36: ^ ^ 

"And old Damoetas loved to hear our song." 

P. 127, 1. 22. a newer trifle. The new house at Gilston, the 
other seat of the Plumer family in the same county. 

P. 127, 1. 25. W s. Lamb refers to the Plumer family under 

these initials. 

P. 128, 1. 8. watchet. Meaning? 

POOK RELATIONS. 

Page 130, Line 10. Agathocles's pot. Agathocles (b.c. 361-289), 
tyrant of Sicily, was the son of a potter. He raised himself to the 
rank of general and brought all Sicily under his power. 

P. 130, 1. 11. Mordecai in your gate. See Book of Esther. 

P. 133, 1. 10. aliquando sufflaminandus. Said of Shakespeare 
by Ben Jonson. 

P. 133, 1. 20. Ricliard Amlet, Esq. The gamester in Van- 
brugh's Confederacy. He is usually called Dick. 



202 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



Page 134, Line 4. Poor W " Tlie Farell of the essay, Christ 's 

Hospital Five-and- Thirty Years Ago. Larab, iu his ' key ' to the ini- 
tials used by him, has written against the initial F. there employed : 
' Farell left Cambridge, because he was asham'd of his father, who 
was a house-painter there.' He was a Grecian in the school in 
Lamb's time, and when at Cambridge wrote to the Duke of York for 
a commission in the army, which was sent him. Lamb here changes 
both his friend's name and his University." — Ainger. 

P. 134, 1. 25. Nessian venom. See JYessus, Classical Dictionary. 

P. 136, 1. 12. Artist Evangelist. According to tradition, St. 
Luke was a painter. 

P. 136, 1. 17. knew^ his mounted sign — and fled. From the 
concluding lines of Paradise Lost, IV. 

" The fiend looked up, and knew 
His mounted scale aloft : nor more : but fled 
Murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night." 

P. 138, 1. 5. Grotiuses. Grotius, orDeGroot (1583-1645), an emi- 
nent Dutch jurist and theologian, was one of the most celebrated 
scholars of his time. There is no greater prodigy on record of preco- 
cious genius than Hugo Grotius, who was able to make good Latin 
verse at nine, and was ready for the university at twelve. 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 

"Charles and Mary Lamb had actually, as here stated, passed 
a week's holiday together at Margate, when the former was quite a 
boy. In his early days of authorship Charles had utilised the expe- 
rience for a sonnet, one of the first he published — ' written at mid- 
night by the sea-side after a voyage.' It is amusing to note these 
two different treatments of the same theme : — 



' O winged bark ! how swift along the night 
Passed thy proud keel ; nor shall I let go by 
Lightly of that dread liour the memory. 
When wet and chilly on thy deck I stood 
Unbonneted, and gazed upon the flood.' " 



AlNGEE. 



JSfOTES. 203 

Page 140, Line 4. Henley. Twenty-three miles southeast of 
Oxford, beautifully situated at the foot of the Chiltern hills. 

P. 140, 1. 9. Worthing . . . Brighton . . . Eastbourn . . . 
Hastings. Watering-places on the coast of Sussex. 

P. 140, 1. 13. Margate. A watering-place of Kent, on the Isle of 
Thanet, 

P. 140, 1. 18. Hoy. A small one-decked, one-masted vessel, em- 
ployed in carrying passengers and goods from port to port on the 
coast. 

P. 141, 1. 7. chimera. A fabled monster said to have the head 
of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a serpent. 

P. 141, 1. 8. fire-god. Hephaestus. See Iliad, XXI. 342. 

P. 141, 1. 8. Scamander. A famous little stream in the plain of 
Troy. 

P. 141, 1. 25. Ariel, flaming at once, etc. See The Tempest, I. 
2, 198 : — 

"Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin, 
I flamed amazement." 

P. 144, 1. 9. ignorant present. See Macbeth, I. v. 57. 

"Thy letters have transported me beyond 
This ignorant present, and I feel now 
The future in the instant." 

P. 144, 1. 12. Colossus at Rhodes. This great statue, one of the 
seven wonders of the world, was supposed to have stood outside the 
mouth of the harbor, so that ships could sail between its legs; but, 
in fact, it stood on one side of the entrance of the port. 

P. 144, 1. 28. Reculvers. Two towers, known as the The Sisters, 
belonging to an old monastic church on the north coast of Kent, and 
now used as a landmark for seamen. 

P. 147, 1. 9. OreUana. The old name of the Amazon, from that 
of its first explorer. 

P. 147, 1. 14. still-vexed Bermoothes. From The Tempest, I. 
2, 229. 

P. 147, 1. 19. Be but as buggs, etc. From Spenser, Faerie 
Queene, Book II., Canto 12. 

P. 147, 1. 21. Juan Fernandez. A rocky island in the Pacific 



204 ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Ocean on whicli tlie buccaneer, Alexander Selkirk, lived. His story 
is supposed to have suggested the Robinson Crusoe of Defoe. 

Page 148, Line 12. poem of Gebir. By Walter Savage Landor. 

P. 148, 1. 14. Cinque Port. Five ports on the southern shore 
of England, which received royal grants of particular privileges, on 
condition of providing, in case of war, a certain number of ships at 
their own expense. 

P. 148, 1. 20. inland murmurs. See Wordsworth's Lines Writ- 
ten above Tintern Abbey, line 4. 

P. 149, 1. 10. Meshech. See Ps. cxx. 5. 

P. 149, 1. 25. run. Contraband. 

P. 150, 1. 8. to read strange matter in. Compare Macbeth, 

I. V. 63: — 

" Your face, my thane, is as a book where men 

May read strange matters." 

P. 151, 1. 10. The daughters of Cheapside, etc. Inaccurately 
quoted from the Ode to Master Anthony Stafford, by Thomas Ran- 
dolph (1605-1635). 

THE CONVALESCENT. 

" Lamb had an illness of the kind here described in the winter of 
1824-1825, and the condition in which it left him seems to have been 
one of the causes of his proposed retirement from the India House. 
As with all the other essays which savour of the autobiographical, 
the freshness and precision of the experience is one of its great 
charms." — Ainger. 

Page 153, Line 3. Mare Clausum. A sea shut up against the 
commerce of the world at large. 

P. 153, 1. 7. Two Tables of the Law. The tables of stone on 
which the commandments were written. See Ex. xxxiv. 29. 

P. 154, 1. 3. honing. Meaning ? 

P. 157, 1. 1. Lernean pangs. It was at Lake Lerna that Her- 
cules destroyed the hydra which did incalculable evil to Argos. 

P. 157, 1. 3. Philoctetes. One of the Argonauts, who had been 
deserted by the Greeks on the island of Lemnos, because of a wounded 
foot. An oracle declared to the Greeks that Troy could not be taken 
without the arrows of Hercules, and as Hercules at death had given 



NOTES. 205 

these to Philoctetes, the Greek chiefs sent for him, and he went to 
Troy in the tenth year of the siege. 

Page 158, Line 10. Tityus. A giant whose body covered nine 
acres of land. In Tartarus two vultures or serpents fed forever on 
his liver, which grew as fast as it was gnawed away. 

THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 

"An account substantially true to facts, of Lamb's retirement 
from the India House. This event occurred on the last Tuesday of 
March, 1825, and Lamb, after his custom, proceeded to make it a 
subject for his next essay of Elia. He here transforms the directors 
of the India House into a private firm of merchants. The names 
Boldero, Merryweather, and the others were not those of directors 
of the Company at the time of Lamb's retirement. Lamb retired on 
a pension of £250, being two-thirds of his salary at that date. Nine 
pounds a year was deducted to assure a pension to Mary Lamb in the 
event of her surviving her brother. ' Here am I,' writes Charles 
to Wordsworth shortly afterward, ' after thirty-three years' slavery, 
sitting in my own room at eleven o'clock, this finest of all April 
mornings, a freed man, with £441 a year for the remainder of my 
life, live I as long as John Dennis, who outlived his annuity, and 
starved at ninety.'" — Ainger. 

Page 159, Line 14. Mincing Lane. One of the mercantile streets 
of London. 

P. 163, 1. 21. Bastile. A state prison in Paris, demolished by the 
rabble in the French Revolution, July 14, 1789. 

P. 164, 1. 21. that's born ... In some green desert. From 
The Mayor of Queenboro, by Thomas Middleton, an Elizabethan 
dramatist (d. 1627). The original has "in a rough desert." 

-P. 165, 1. 21. 'Twas but just now he went away, etc. From 
The Vestal Virgin, or The Roman Ladies, Act V. Scene 1. 

P. 166, 1. 20. Ch . . . PI . " Of Lamb's fellow-clerks in 

the India House referred to here by their initials, Ch was a Mr. 

Chambers, PI was W. D. Plumley, the son of a silversmith in 

Cornhill, and Do a Mr. Henry Dodwell, evidently one of Lamb's 

most intimate friends in the office." — Ainger. 

P. 166, 1. 23. Gresham, Sir Thomas (1519-1579), a wealthy Eng- 



206 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



lish merchant. At his own expense he built the Royal Exchange, 
London, and founded Gresham College in 1575. 

Page 166, Line 24. Whittington, Sir Richard, a mercer by trade, 
and thrice Lord Mayor of London. He was distinguished as a public 
benefactor, and as the hero of the popular tale of Whittington and 
his cat. 

P. 167, 1. 3. Aquinas, St. Thomas, surnamed the Angelic Doctor, 
was perhaps the most eminent scholastic teachej that ever lived. 
He taught and preached for some years at Paris and Rome. His 
most important work is his Sum of Theology (Summa Theologise). 

P. 167, 1. 4. My mantle, etc. An allusion to 2 Kings ii. 12-15. 

P. 167, 1. 12. Carthusian. See note on A Quaker's Meeting, 
p. 63, 1. 28. 

P. 167, 1. 27. everlasting flints. See Romeo and Juliet, II. vi. 17 : — 

" O so light a foot 
Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint." 

P. 167, 1. 28. PaU MaU. The centre of club-life and street of 
modem palaces. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Pall 
Mall was a fashionable suburban promenade. 

P. 167, 1. 28. 'Change time. The time of the stock-brokers' 
m.eeting at the Exchange. 

P. 167, 1. 29. Elgin marbles. Brought by Thomas, Earl of Elgin, 
from Greece, principally from the Parthenon at Athens. They were 
purchased by the Government for £35,000, and are now in the British 
Museum. 

P. 168, 1. 19. huge cantle. Large portion or corner. Compare 
1 Henry IV., III. i. 100. 

P. 168, 1. 25. Lucretian pleasure. Alluding to the De Rerum 
Natura of Lucretius, ii. 1^4: "It is sweet, when on the great sea 
the winds trouble its waters, to behold from land another's deep dis- 
tress ; not that it is pleasure and delight that any should be afflicted, 
but because it is sweet to see from what evils you yourself are 
exempt." 

P. 169, 1. 7. As low as to the fiends. See Hamlet, II. ii. 519: — 

*' Bowl the round nave down the hill of hea,ven, 
As low as to the fiends." 



NOTES. 207 



OLD CHINA. 

" This beautiful essay tells its own story . . . this time, we may be 
sure, without romance or exaggeration of any kind. It is a conttibu- 
tion of singular interest to our understanding of the happier days of 
Charles and Mary's united life." — Ainger. 

Page 171, Line 3. Mandarin. Any Chinese official, civil or 
military, who wears a button. 

P. 171, 1. 14. hays. A round country-dance. 

P. 171, 1. 20. speciosa miracula. From Horace, Ars Poetica, 
line 144. 

P. 172, 1. 18. Covent Garden. Originally the great fruit and 
vegetable market of London. 

P. 173, 1. 22. Colnaghi's. A celebrated print-shop of those days. 

P. 173, 1. 22. a wilderness. Compare Merchant of Venice, III. 
i. 128. " It was my turquoise ... I would not have given it for a 
wilderness of monkeys." 

P. 176, 1. 28. hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton. See note on JSfeiv 
Year's Eve, p. 41, 1. 10. 

P. 177, 1. 8. poor hundred pounds. At this time Lamb was 

receiving about £650 a year. 

P. 177, 1. 12. shake the superflux. See Lear, III. iv. 35 : — 

"Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, 
That thou may'st shake the superflux to them." 

P. 178, 1. 14. K . Rothschild, the banker. 

P. 178, 1. 17. bed-tester. Canopy at the head of a bed. Tester 
is from the O. F. teste, a head. 



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